Inequality of Pay in Sports Essay Example

Imagine going to work and finding out that your co-worker makes double to quadruple the amount of money that you make because they’re the opposite gender of you…. How does that make you feel? It feels as if you’re being cheated of money and you’d want that resolved ASAP right? Well, that’s how female athletes in the US feel compared to male athletes. 

According to Forbes, the USWNT won the Women’s FIFA World Cup four times and they make around $100,000 per year. However, the USMNT has NEVER won the Men’s Fifa World Cup and they make quadruple the amount of money that the women make. How does that make any sense? Also, let's look at the salary for WNBA players and NBA players…. The average WNBA salary is around $71,000, yet the average NBA salary is around $8,000,000. The salaries between the two leagues aren’t anywhere near each other. The pay between Men and Women in the US is a disgrace. Why is one gender being seen as superior towards the other? 

The pay gap is a huge issue in the US and based on the statistics I provided, it needs to be changed! The women's leagues have proven that they play just as well and even better than the men. The USWNT has attended the World Cup final five times since it was originally introduced, and they have won four of those matches. Now when we look at the USMNT World Cup stats, we see that they haven't won a world cup, and to make matters worse, they struggle to even qualify. That now leads me into my next part: the women's team won the 2014 World Cup tournament but they were awarded $7 million less (prize money) than the male soccer players who failed in Round 16. In 2016, the two-time Olympic gold medallist, soccer player, Hope Amelia Solo filed a lawsuit against the “U.S Soccer Federation for Disregarding pay Equity” along with her teammates. 

However, people who disagree with equal pay between genders in sports give off invalid excuses. For example, one may say, “Female athletes do not have the same level of athletic performance as male athletes. The study has shown that compared to females, males have more muscle, higher blood volume, and more red blood cells, and those differences can be 30% in individuals.” I can disagree with that false claim because the only reason why it looks like men perform better than women is that the media doesn’t acknowledge women the same way they do for men. Men get so much media coverage and women struggle to get any sort of media attention. Another excuse is, “Currently, male athletes have better world records than female athletes. Take the case of running, swimming and skating, each sport reveals the fact that male athletes world record was about 10% more than female athletes record.” Like I mentioned earlier, if you give the female athletes the same respect, they’d be able to do just as well. Sporting companies like Nike, Jordan, Under Armor, etc. don’t sponsor women teams or individuals the same way they do for the men, which results in them not getting the same training or sporting equipment/utilities to train to be at the highest performance!

The goal for equal pay isn’t for men and women to make the exact amount of money that each other makes, but to make it somewhat close. We don’t want the US to result in communism, we just want equality among each other because both men and women work too hard and devote their lives to their job (sports) and they shouldn’t be seen as less than someone else because of their gender. Personally (along with the millions of other people who support this claim), it is seen as outrageous that men make millions and millions, while women only make thousands and thousands. Both men and women, but especially women have broken down lots of barriers in these last few years, so why make life even harder by requiring women to need to break down another barrier. 

In conclusion, I stand strong with the Equal Pay Rights in sports and you should too. #WomenDeserveEqualPay has been a way to provide insight into the problem. Also, it’s been a resource for millions of people to spread the word on the issues they see around the world regarding Women In Sports.