Should female athletes Fight for equalpay?
With the International Women’s Day in sight, theequality chest has been once again struck open.
Female athletes want equal prize money for both sexes.But where lies the fairness in their equality?
“Last Friday, the US Women’s National Team made thelatest submission in their protracted genderdiscrimination lawsuit against US soccer, with anexpert believing them to be owed as much as £51.3m($66m) if only they can prove they have been paidworse than men for doing the same job” — Sky Sports.
So, should female athletes get equal pay?
OK. Lets take this to another level. Why stop there?
Modeling is just like athletics: your pay is primarilydetermined by your popularity an appeal within thepublic audience. Shouldn’t we make sure that the payis equal for models and athletes? Wouldn’t that befair?
But wait, female models earn way much more thanthe male models. This is because female models aresignificantly more popular and often have sponsorship.That’s just how it is in sports.
Let’s turn the question around.
Should a male model get equal pay?
How do we determine ‘equal’? We have to start somewhere, right? So let’s run on the average. The’average’ male model needs to make the same as the’average’ female model. That fair, right? But just likesports, the top female models makes a lot more thanthe rest of the female models. Do we have to accountfor that? That’s complicated. Let’s run with theaverage.
From an economic standpoint, equal pay is absurd.Ludicrous. This is because it separates the economicvalues of a service from the compensation from it.
Let’s examine tennis. The average length of women’smatch at a major championship is approximately 1/2as long as the length in men’s match. So already interms of number of hours of entertainment for whichTV sponsors and event attendees pay, men are twice asvaluable. Add that to the fact that attendance within the stadium for women’s match is about 1/2 as muchas the men’s match. The TV viewership is much morehigher on average for men’s matches.
Well, it has been 13 long years since the All EnglandLawn Tennis Club made Wimbledon prize moneyequal after years of agitation. Do you think footballwill follow the same route?
After the last FIFA World Cup some women agitated for equal pay. The thing is, the bonuses paid to to men’s team were three times better than what the female team got. Easy, thats just because men’s team generated more…
From an economic standpoint, women should be making 1/4 as much as men because that is proportionate with the audience they attract and the volume of entertainment they provide.
Do I really think female footballers should get equalpay?
Oh yes! Only if they attract a billion poundsponsorship deals, TV deals, and attract a crowd ofabout 50,000, all paying £60 for a ticket. Why not?
This is just a simple suply and demand. You shouldearn based on the revenue you generate.
By Ekechi Gerard
