Research Paper on Women in Sports: Bridging the Gender Pay Gap

Introduction

Just like society and the professional realm, the sports industry has long held a visible gender pay gap (Berkman, 2017). For some time now, women have risen and empowered themselves to advocate for pay equality between male and female players. There is considerable progress already, and many athletes, teams, and organizations such as the International Olympic Committee (IOC) are supporting the campaigns (Jaffe, 2019). This is a systematic shift from the previous pattern of patriarchal systems in sports, which furthered gender-based scrutiny procedures such as gender testing. The IOC has endeavored to achieve gender equality through mechanisms like including mixed-gender action sports to spur more female participation (Berkman). This paper argues that women deserve equal treatment and compensation in athletics as their male counterparts.

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Action Sports

The actions sports that IOC uses to attract more young and female fans include windsurfing, bicycle motocross, and mountain biking (Berkman, 2017). The efforts saw the formation of the Women and Sport Commission in 2004 to advise IOC's Executive Committee on gender parity issues. The result is the recent increase in women's involvement in Olympic games from 44.3 percent in the 2012 London games to 45 percent in the 2016 Rio Olympics (Antunovic, 2016). Even with these, media representation, rule disparities, differences in sponsorship volumes, and inequality in publicity remain significant areas of gender imbalance in sports. This disparity is also reflected and furthered by the minimal representation of women in key decision-making positions in sports such as coaching and management (17% of NOC's management) (Wheaton & Thorpe, 2018).

Still, the introduction of action sports has faced some political and classical challenges. This is because some action sports cultures have gendered structures and roles, and native participants may feel infiltrated. For example, the World Surf League (WSL), the organization that manages international surfing competitions, has received stiff criticism for failing to upscale the sponsorship and prize money and reduce the marginalization of the female surfer (Antunovic, 2016). Since both male and female athletes are in the game for the same reasons of fun, talent exploitation, and profit, it is only reasonable that they equally benefit from the sport. In 2016, WSL managed to move towards gender pay balance by raising the prize money for women, but the parity is still not fully achieved to date (Hutchins, Curry, & Flaherty, 2019).

Hockey

The same disparity dynamics have tormented hockey as a sport. In 2017, the United States women's national team had to threaten to boycott the International Ice Hockey Federation world championship to get a dialogue with the USA Hockey on pay increase negotiations (Das, 2018). The mix-up revealed the gender imbalance in the USA Hockey management, with a meager 20 percent (Das) women representation, which is among the lowest in the world. It came out that 91 board members were allowed to vote, of whom only 15 were women and that the board of directors has 19 members, but only 2 were women (Coche & Tuggle, 2017). These revelations showed that an inside voice should be created to ensure that women's teams receive enough recognition.

Achievements

On the positive side, institutions like the USA Figure Skating have achieved gender balance, and have more women in management positions than men (Hutchins, Curry & Flaherty, 2019). Despite lacking a voice at the table, the USA women's volleyball team has maintained a stellar performance, winning a medal in each Olympic championship since 1998 (Dosh, 2020). Since 1990, the team has always been either the winner or runners up in Olympics. Also, USA Hockey has continually registered more girls over the years, with 14 girls in 2014 and 15 in 2015 (Dosh, 2020). In negotiations with the body, the national women's team was advocating for a $70,000 yearly pay, equal to what men earn. They used to earn $59, 000 yearly (Simril, 2019) averagely.

Women's athletics has earned massive popularity in recent years, but this lag in pay rates' pace has posed significant drawbacks. The works of female athletes have been low-paid for long compared to their male counterparts. After the negotiations of 2017, the US women's Olympic team reached an agreement with USA Hockey to have the players' monthly stipend doubled to $20000 and receive the same insurance and travel support as male players (Elsesser, 2019). Under the umbrella of the Professional Women Hockey Players' Association, the team also earned a deal in May 2019 (Simril, 2019), which was a significant breakthrough to their work, but they never revealed the financial details.

Title IX

In 1972, the United States passed Title IX, a regulation which prohibited gender discrimination in any government-sponsored projects (Dosh, 2020). Journalists, sports enthusiasts, and other professionals have been weighing on the impacts of Title IX on women empowerment since then. Many agree that the law opened novel opportunities for American women in the sporting atmosphere, both locally and internationally (Berkman, 2017). Despite the newly spirited progress of women sporting activities, female athletes continued to experience minimal media attention (Jaffe, 2019). This inequitable media coverage brings to fore the untold resentment or low acknowledgment that journalists had for Title IX or gender parity. It makes it essential to boost sports journalists' faith in women's power.

Despite being the principal instigator of women's bloom in sports, the law met intense cultural conflicts that lead to misinterpretation and sometimes complete omission. Because journalism is directly connected to the society, it is these rigid societal patterns that might have led to the continued negligible media coverage of women's sporting activities in the country. Title IX was proposed to lead the country into a broader array of circumstances, such as acceptance of the physical abilities of women and to use legislation to create an environment of equal social and civil rights (Antunovic, 2016). This means that the law may not have yet hit the optimal social transformation that its proponents intended.

As entertainment, the sports industry should mirror the core values in the society; that all people were created equal. Title IX indeed empowered female student talents, but this empowerment got varnished once they graduated and became independent adult athletes (Wheaton & Thorpe, 2018). The notions get tragic at times, and the less hearted women may quit. Losing such great talent for a country is a tremendous loss, and governments and stakeholders must push harder to ensure more women are inspired to hone their art and earn from it. A gender-balanced environment removes laziness, entitlement, and promotes a team culture which means the team will perform better.

Media Coverage

After the 2016 Olympics, the National Broadcasting Company (NBC) received sharp criticism over their sexist approach to the coverage of male and female sports during prime time (7 pm to 9 pm). Das (2018) states that during prime time, NBC has male games more airtime than female games. The broadcaster also aired more socially acceptable women sports (those involving leotards and swimsuits). The coverage of strength sports showed mostly men's contests while giving female competitions a near-blackout. The writer also noted that the media mostly use male coaches and sports executives for reference more than their female counterparts. Newspaper and TV quotes also mostly came from more male sports officials than female ones (Das, 2018).

The inadequate coverage of women's sporting activities lacks candid backing. The only presumption would be the social prejudices and biases cultivated by the very media. In fact, in the 2016 summer Olympics, American female athletes posted better results than their male counterparts (Coche & Tuggle, 2017). They brought home 52 percent of the country's medals and 60 percent of the team's gold medals.

Still, the male players and their games got more airtime during prime time on NBC's screens. It is essential, however, to mention that compared to previous Olympics championships, the 2016 one was a significant improvement in terms of female sports coverage (Coche & Tuggle, 2017). In fact, the coverage at NBC was higher for some sports for women than men's games.

Men Coaching Female Teams

Another worrying trend for sports feminists is that most female teams, irrespective of the sport, have male coaches (Elsesser, 2019). This pattern further exposes the difficulty that women experience to get hired in powerful positions, even after Title IX. In fact, before Title IX, 90 percent of coachers for female teams were women (Elsesser). This was because women sports received less funding, which means low pay for the coaches (Simril, 2019). Then came Title IX, which demanded that institutions and schools provide equal funding for male and female sports, which meant higher pays for the teams' coaches. Title IX was a significant boot to female athletes, but it made men more interested in the coaching positions.

Given the deep gender bias in society at that time, and somehow today, most men ended up getting hired for the jobs (Dosh, 2020). The increased pay, prestige, and power that now came with the coaching jobs made many qualified men interested, leaving qualified women behind. Today, less than half of female teams have female coaches, and just eight percent of male teams have female coaches (Coche & Tuggle, 2017). There is a general claim that most male coaches played the game they coach, thus know it well (Das, 2018). But this is also true for female coaches, which should mean that female sports should be thronged with female coaches, but that is not the case.

A Shift in Social Beliefs

The misogynistic perceptions that have riddled the society for long need to end and the most prominent forces that can lead the charge are media houses and sports organizations. The world needs to be allowed to experience how entertaining, energetic, and skillful women have become at their sports. Sport is about talent, and both men and women have the same capacity to optimize their talent if given similar platforms and treatment. Promoting equal treatment and pay for both genders will serve as motivation to young talented girls throughout the country. They will clearly understand that if they do as good a job as their male counterparts, the pay and treatment will be the same.

The ugliness of the double-standard in women's treatment plays even in serious social life scenarios. Sponsors seemingly have no problem with their male players having babies and starting families, but female athletes deciding to have babies undergo some sad frustrations (Coche & Tuggle, 2017). When Allyson Felix, a 9-time medal winner, decided to have a baby, Nike, her primary sponsor, refused to support her through the pregnancy. Nike would later have to be coerced and backlashed in the court of public opinion after the story went viral. Ffdfdfd They agreed to amend their pregnancy policy and provide protections for sponsored athletes (Hutchins, Curry & Flaherty, 2019). The boldness with which Felix got Nike to respond is what the modern society needs to achieve more of such wins for female players.