'Gender wage gap' in sport makes perfect sense

It’s hard to overstate the profound stupidity of demanding an end to the “gender wage gap” in professional sport.

Ronda Rousey: “I think how much you get paid should have something to do with how much money you bring in.”

It’s hard to overstate the profound stupidity of demanding an end to the “gender wage gap” in professional sport.

Expecting equal pay for equal effort in sport is among the most asinine bulldust you’ll see in 2019.

But that is precisely what the Male Champions of Change Pathway to Pay Equality report, backed by the reliably woke heads of major sporting codes — including the AFL, NRL and FFA — has recommended.

The report got the usual feminists excited with talk of AFLW players earning the same salaries as AFL stars, but anybody who has any interest in sport, business or reality would’ve treated the blueprint with the disdain it so richly deserved.

In the real world the income of an athlete, male or female, corresponds to their marketability.

And, that marketability is linked directly to the viewing and purchasing habits of consumers, including women.

That’s why elite kayakers, shot-putters and hockey players, of both sexes, who train tirelessly and win medals are not reaping in the millions or even the thousands.

Some of our great athletes don’t make a dime despite the enormous work they do to represent their country.

You don’t see athletes from low-profile sports claim bigotry for their lack of financial reward, but low-profile sportswomen are increasingly blaming sexism for their lack of riches.

It’s not sexism, misogyny or bias, unconscious or otherwise, that makes the overwhelming majority of women in professional sport earn salaries well below their male counterparts. It’s the fact that sports lovers, including most female fans, prefer the product produced by men.

These facts were, of course, overlooked in putting together the gender wage gap in sport report.

Male Champions of Change convener Liz Broderick said the report represented a line in the sand. “It is unacceptable in 2019 that men and women playing the same sport don’t get the same base pay and conditions,” she said.

I’m sorry, but commercial realities are neither unacceptable nor sexist. Do we have ridiculous reports demanding that male models be paid the same as their high-earning female colleagues?

Top male models don’t earn anything near what Miranda Kerr and Gisele Bundchen take home. Indeed, many professional male models would be lucky to make in a year what a female model can make from a single endorsement.

In the modelling world, as in the sporting and entertainment sectors, you are compensated in accordance to the income you generate, not how many hours you put in or how hard you try or even how good you are.

When female sports stars generate significant interest and sales, they do reap the economic benefits.

Ronda Rousey was the highest-paid fighter in the UFC because the fans loved her and paid to watch her fights. It’s clear that Rousey is no fan of feminist notions of equal pay irrespective of results.

“I think how much you get paid should have something to do with how much money you bring in,” she said.

“ I’m the highest paid fighter not because Dana (White, UFC president) and Lorenzo (Fertitta, UFC CEO) wanted to do something nice for the ladies.

“They do it because I bring in the highest numbers.”

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