Whenever we look at professional sports, sometimes even college sports, one thing is obvious: media coverage, funding, and attention are handed to the male athletes 95% of the time. It is so strange to me why so little is done to change this. I strongly believe that this needs to change. Unequal pay for women is a violation of rights they have worked so hard for. Both males and females have spent countless hours, putting in work. So female athletes deserve an equal pay too. 

  Both men AND women have the physical talent and drive to play their respective sports, but the men are making quite a lot more than the women are. While pay for women has improved over the years a little bit, the gap is still an unacceptable margin. According to the CNBC, the 2019 FIFA Women’s Soccer team was paid 260,000 dollars each for winning a World Cup, while the men’s team was made 1.1 million dollars each and they didn’t even make it to the World Cup championship game. Yet the women still got paid less as champions than their male counterparts who were less successful. In 2022, the bonus for the men’s World Cup in Qatar is 440 million dollars. The women, on the other hand, will receive 60 million dollars as prize money. That’s a 360-million-dollar difference. That’s crazy! It’s not just soccer. WBNA (Women’s National Basketball Association) players are only payed 130,000 dollars on average which is a very meager amount compared to NBA players who make 5.3 million on average. This blows my mind, especially when we consider the fact that these women have put in just as much hard work as the men have. 

I think a major problem with this is that male athletes are marketed more and have a much bigger fan base. Men are often seen more on television, social media, and marketing for sports stores. As a female athlete myself, I think more girls from around the world would be more inspired if we saw more female athletes on commercials, magazine, sports store ads, and products. The amount of publicity that is given to athletes is an important part of the gender gap in sports. 

One rationale given is that women’s sports are just not entertaining enough. “Women’s sports only receive 4% of coverage on new stations,” Women’s Media Center reports. But how can someone say that women’s sports aren’t entertaining enough when we don’t even give them the opportunity to catch the viewers’ attention? It is argued that while professional sports are for entertainment and a showcase of athletic performances, they are also a business. “It is very clear why NBA players make more than WBNA players- they simply generate more revenue,” Lucas Wong wrote for the Los Angeles Times in his editorial.  Women have been a lot more successful than men in various sports but are yet paid less because they are deemed “uninteresting”. As unfortunate as this is, it may relate back to the simple fact that they are women, and many people believe that sports don’t have a space for these incredible women. 

If women were given the support and attention that they deserve, they could be paid an equal amount. We need to see more female athletes being represented throughout the media. They need to be given more time on news networks and social media, giving spectators the opportunity to see how talented and incredible these women are. 

Not only do women deserve equal pay, but they need it. Many WNBA players play in leagues overseas during their off season because they make more there than they do here. I don’t think people understand how incredibly risky this is. What if they get injured? That takes them out of their season, and they only get paid their team’s salary. Sometimes, playing these sports are the only income these women receive. And what are the men doing? Nothing, because they make the same amount in one season than women do in both one WBNA season AND an overseas season. They don’t have to risk an injury in order to receive an income. Why are we sitting back and doing nothing about this? The ugly truth is that women are being denied equal pay. Women have put in the same amount of blood, sweat and tears as men, so they need to be treated the same. Women deserve equal pay!