It is a well-known fact that male athletes are more popular and more famous than female athletes. It is also a generally agreed upon fact that male athletes are paid more than female athletes. But why is this? Feminism has been spreading across the nation, and so many aspects of American life have been changed for the better for women, but somehow women’s sports and women athletes have gotten little attention from the feminist movement. In colleges across the country, males receive around 55% of the scholarship funds, leaving 45% to women, which does not seem like a lot, but the gap becomes more apparent when looking at budgets. Coaches of men’s sports at colleges receive an average annual salary of $1.78 million, while coaches of women’s sports receive on average $850,400 which leaves a gap of almost one million dollars. When coaches go to recruit new athletes for their college teams, women’s sports only get 33% of the budget to recruit.
Many people cite the fact that female athletes get paid less due to the fact that men’s sports generate more spectators, and therefore more revenue for the owner. Contrary to popular belief, it is not proof that boys are more interested in sports than girls. Growing up, girls are actually equally as interested in sports as girls, however due to lack of support from peers and societal norms, girls drop out of sports twice as often as boys do. Under Title IX, girls are allowed to try out for men’s sports if there is no women’s team available. It is also shown that women who participate in sports are half as likely to become depressed and are twice as likely to have higher self-esteem. Girls who participate in sports are also shown to have higher GPAs.
Speaking about professional athletes, women and men both get contracts to advertise products from Nike or Adidas, but significantly more men than women get asked to be featured in said advertisements. Women, instead, are asked to be featured in the Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue. This disparity in deals further separates men’s sports from women’s sports. In 2013, women’s sports received just 7% of airtime on national television. Even now, the Women’s World Cup is occurring, and it is significantly less hyped than the Men’s equivalent. There are actually many people who did not even know there was a World Cup occurring right now. Many sports reporters have also refused to cover the Women’s World Cup because it "isn’t legitimate." I find this interesting because while the men’s team went into the World Cup seeded 27th in the world, and the women’s went into its respective World Cup ranked second, everyone still flocked around the television to watch “our boys” defeat the tournament favorite, Germany. This gap between men’s and women’s sports is ridiculous and something needs to be done.
So what can we do? According to the Women’s Sports Foundation, we can go and support women’s sporting events, coach girl’s teams, and encourage television stations to show more women’s sports. We can fight the stereotype that women are incompetent in sports, and more importantly get involved in sports, and not only do as well as men—do better.
