Female Athletes Still Deserve Equal Pay

Abby Wambach is a FIFA World Cup champion, two-time Olympic gold medalist, and the highest-scoring international soccer player of all time — male or female. Yet, she and her teammates were paid less than American male soccer players, who are objectively less talented and accomplished. Throughout her 2019 book Wolfpack, Wambach raises awareness of this inequality — for example, noting that while the FIFA World Championship has been held annually for both men and women since 1991, in 2015, the winning men’s team was paid 19 times more than the winning women’s team. The men’s team won $38 million, while the women’s team won only $2 million — a disparity that led the USA women’s soccer team to file a complaint to be paid as much as men.

Abby Wambach and her soccer team are just one example of the widespread pay discrimination that female athletes of all kinds face. For example, according to a 2019 Forbes article, WNBA players make $71,635 on average while the average NBA salary is $6.4 million. As a female athlete myself, I have often wondered why the tremendous gap between male and female athletes’ payments has persisted for so long and what we can do to change it.

It seems one of the most important factors that has enabled this gender inequality is the difference in the amount of publicity male and female athletes get. A 2019 report found that female athletes receive only 4% of coverage on news shows. One rationale given for the lack of coverage of female athletes is that they are not as entertaining as men. But how can audiences decide female athletes are not entertaining when sports channels don’t even give female athletes a chance to capture viewers’ attention?

As young people, we tend to find idols, people we admire and strive to be like. The lack of television coverage of female athletes creates an illusion that there is not a significant number of female athletes worthy of admiration — that they are failing — when in fact, there are many who are very successful. Sports channels would do well to increase the coverage of female athletes, not just because it is the fair thing to do, but because there are many people who admire women’s sports and know about women like Abby Wambach, Serena Williams, Simone Biles, and so many more, and increasing coverage would increase their viewership. An increase in publicity would also create even more interest for female sports and, ultimately, increase payment for female athletes.

Athletes like Abby Wambach have started a movement. Now it is our turn to continue what they started and demand that sports channels must change their attitudes toward female sports and finally provide female athletes with the opportunities for the recognition they deserve.