Why demanding sports gender pay equality is bulldust
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, and it’s only February, writes Rita Panahi.
Rita Panahi
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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, and it’s only February.
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.
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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.
Sport isn’t entirely about who can hit hardest, run fastest or jump highest, or no one would bother watching women’s sport.
Performance is also about finesse, technique and personalities. The huge success of female tennis and golf stars is testament to that fact.
The last time a couple of the world’s best female players, Venus and Serena Williams, took on a male, they lost 6-2 and 6-1 respectively despite their opponent being a mediocre player, Karsten Braasch, ranked outside the top 200.
But it matters not that female players cannot compete with men on the court, they can compete with them in creating compelling contests and plenty of revenue.
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.”
If you wanted true equality in the income of professional athletes then you wouldn’t stop at gender. You’d ensure that every world-class high jumper, javelin thrower and fencer was earning the same as the sprinters, basketballers and footballers.
You’d make sure that sports and professional leagues that generate enormous revenue because of their popularity subsidise competitions where there is little public interest.
If that’s your idea of a socialist nirvana then fine but don’t dress up your agenda as some brave battle against entrenched misogyny.
The disparate incomes have nothing to do with sexism and everything to do with market realities.
Gender warriors rarely allow little things like facts and rationality to intrude on their activism.
For reasons that are not entirely clear, the AFLW has morphed into a political statement as much as a sporting competition.
And, like all woke pursuits, any criticism no matter how mild or deserved is met with an angry and disproportionate response.
I can say that golf bores me to tears and no one bats an eyelid, but mention that you have no interest in the AFLW and its fans behave like you’ve attacked womanhood itself.
It’s not internalised misogyny that has most women watching male competitions, it’s the simple fact that it’s usually a better product.
Rita Panahi is a Herald Sun columnist
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