A new report has found a “vast” gender wage gap exists within sport, with female athletes battling for better pay in a billion-dollar industry that remains predominantly male.
Key to this is removing the range of systematic barriers facing women in sport. These barriers include
sexist behaviour, gender pay gaps and poor media coverage. According to The Tucker Centre for Research
on Girls and Women in Sport,3 although 40 per cent of participants in sport are female only four per cent
of sports media coverage goes to female sports.
As the money’s in the media the pay gap is a surprise because?
“Key to this is removing the range of systematic barriers facing women in sport. These barriers include…”
Well, forcing those girls to compete in their own tournaments and not allowing them to compete against them in open events. Just having open, unisex events would remove this discrimination forever at a stroke.
And, of course, this would be the same “media” that is telling us how awful this all is, while having entirely andro-centric sports pages (well, and the racing page.)
Motes and beams, as usual.
I blame all the women who only watch men’s tennis.
Are women that interested in sport? How many girls grow up watching sports? From memory, almost all the boys watched football, rugby, and cricket and only a handful of the girls. Is this girls expressing their preference or have they been socially conditioned?
Tim Newman, the ladies are pretty interested in tennis and showjumping.
Also men’s beach volleyball, if ‘Top Gun’ is anything to go by…
JuliaM, but blokes interested in women’s beach volleyball are perverts?
did they really say that we should remove “pay gaps” by “removing pay gaps”?
I’m with Ironman. Be careful what you wish for, SJWs. Add to this the controversy over intersex classification and the argument for unisex sports becomes more and more likely.
Also men’s beach volleyball, if ‘Top Gun’ is anything to go by…
My impression was that a lot of men were interested in that too. The movie certainly has a reputation for being one of the most homoerotic of all time 🙂
I (male) am one of the only people I know (male or female) who actually watches some female sport (triathlon). I only know one or two women who watch any sport at all (rugby. male.). If they want female athletes to be paid more then they need to go watch female athletes… I always like to bring this up. “Media should give equal airtime to female sport!” “Do you watch any of the female sport that currently gets shown?” “Shut up!”
But yeah, make it all unisex. It will be endlessly amusing to hear the logical contortions feminists then have to go through to argue for gender segregation in sport. I imagine responses will be similar to those around making women eligible for the draft.
LTW,
It was a source of amusement, shall we say, how much 1980s Hollywood featured its portrayal of “elite US military” as either oiled, gleaming and flexing through a sports match in loving close-up, or else engaged in hand-to-hand mud wrestling with many ripped-off shirts, rippling muscles, grappling, holding, fit young men rolling about locked in fierce embrace… no subtext going on there At All, is there?
Anyway, I feel it’s intensely racist and ageist and ability-ist that Usain Bolt gets more airtime and sports sponsorship than I do, just because he can be finishing his victory lap before I’ve limped and wheezed my way down the first hundred metres. This is discrimination and I demand redress – why should I not be a successful sportsperson just because I lack any ability or interest?
Rather amusing they used a photo of the aussie womens football team, who received what can only be called a hiding from a high school boys team. I suspect they were significantly better paid than the boys too, I wonder why their were no complaints about that wage gap?
Although not quite the same Bridge has Open and women’s events, with the higher prize money (not very much) in the Open.
Sky covers both male and female football and we know through the bidding wars which is most valuable. Ditto Test cricket.
Women cricketers have appeared in the male Big Bash, which also has men’s and women’s leagues.
This is another cry for cushy well paid jobs.
Test Match Special has been bigging up chick cricket for several years now. If it still isn’t getting listener (or viewer, presumably Sky is doing the same on the telly) traction then that might be a clue that no-one is interested.
The BBC news cricket coverage has resorted to sneakily presenting articles about women’s cricket as if it was the men’s. That way they can point to the click through rate and claim interest in women’s cricket ‘has boomed’.
“Women cricketers have appeared in the male Big Bash”
Erm, no they haven’t. There is a female Big Bash League that runs at the same time as the mens competition. Any female player who turned out in a top class professional male 20/20 game would stand a good chance of serious injury, either while batting or fielding.
No female cricketer has played at international, first class or List A cricket with men. The best that anyone has achieved is a few games in Grade cricket in Australia, or in ECB premier league amateur cricket in the UK. And that has literally been a few games – presumably because the participants soon realised they were way out of their depth – if they were competitive they’d presumably have continued playing at that level.
And the Australian female football team lost 7-0 to an under 16s team from a professional football team, the Newcastle Jets:
http://www.standard.co.uk/sport/football/australian-womens-national-team-lose-70-to-team-of-15yearold-boys-a3257266.html
Maybe someone could arrange for the Oz women to play Barcelona? Although they might want to get themselves ready by playing Celtic first.
‘This is another cry for cushy well paid jobs.’
Maybe. But the commie way is to crush everyone down to the lowest common denominator. That’s the only way to achieve real equality of outcome.
Tim Newman,
“Are women that interested in sport? How many girls grow up watching sports? From memory, almost all the boys watched football, rugby, and cricket and only a handful of the girls. Is this girls expressing their preference or have they been socially conditioned?”
It’s overwhelmingly the former.
I know lots of modern, middle class parents who will gladly take their daughter to football practice or to watch a game. My girls have plenty of access to TV, but not once did they want to watch The Olympics, and they’ve refused my offers of going to cricket.
What girls like, exercise wise, is mostly swimming, cycling, walking and dancing. And not competitive versions. You want to help girls? Build more cycle paths so they aren’t fighting with traffic. Remove VAT on gym memberships.
“but blokes interested in women’s beach volleyball are perverts?”
All men are perverts. Have you not heard?
+1 for Ducky McDuckface
Bloke in Wiltshire – or they could simply remove VAT full stop. Stop the unpaid tax collection of 1/6th of what someone pays.
“Women cricketers have appeared in the male Big Bash”
I missed that bit.
Sports people get paid a % of what their “buyers” can sell them on for.
Rooney wouldn’t get out of bed for what England’s best cricketers earn, who, in turn, could not afford to play test cricket for Pakistan.
Meanwhile, Ellie Simmonds – a woman – makes much more from her personality or attitude than she does from her actual successes (though the latter are a prerequisite). None of this is “fair”, but it’s certainly fair.
Btw, 50 years ago English cricketers made more than the footballers. Certainly the amateurs did.
The disparity in athletic ability starts early and grows. I remember nigh-on forty years ago at prep school the girls’ rounders team responded to our taunts that it was a silly sport by challenging a scratch team of us to a match. After we beat them by something like 71-3 (really), they shut up.
Those Armed Forces of the world that have been gelded by feminism and so have to pretend women can be soldiers put out little tables that show what female “soldiers” are expected to do to pass as the real thing.
Basically an 18-year-old year girl who wants a college scholarship has to be able to perform at the same level of a 40 year old man.
There is no comparison between men and women when it comes to physical abilities.
These barriers include
sexist behaviour, gender pay gaps and poor media coverage.
1. Sexist behavior – fine. Unisex leagues. The women get to compete with and against men. If they can make the try-outs.
2. Gender pay gap – there is no gender pay gap in sports. There’s a ‘people won’t pay as much to see women competing against women’ *income* gap for sports teams. Not as much money coming in means the people working there don’t get paid as much.
3. Lack of media coverage – because a lot fewer people watch women’s sports there are fewer advertizers willing to pay to have someone out there covering women’s sports.
Every single ‘problem’ this person posits exists solely due to the freely made choices of consumers, athletes, and other market participants and the only solutions he proposes are to take away these people’s freedom to act and impose duties on everyone.
A huge wage gap, negative infinite exists between me plying my trade for my cricket team and any professional. The 1% demand that I pay to play rather than get paid.
Its outrageous and I demand MPs debate this in parliament and due reverence from the thicky SJWs.
Justice for village cricketers! The Working Class of the sporting world!
Justice for village cricketers!
I’ve pretty much given up myself, now that I work mainly in the heathen US, however this is a cause whose time has come.
I’ll keep the teas – professional sports-sciencey meals sound a bit grim – and a big mug of splosh has to be better than “taking fluids on board”. And they can keep the videos and the persistent need to “execute their plans”.
But I want the cash.
@ Rob Harries
You cannot be an athlete!
I have to pay to belong to England Athletics before I am allowed to pay to compete in a race.