Australian basketball legend Lauren Jackson says pay equity needed for men’s and women’s athletes

Amid a boom in women’s and girl’s sport across Australia, one of the country’s trailblazers says the time has come for pay equity between male and female athletes.

Erin Phillips has been the best player in the formative years of AFLW.

Olympians, footballers, administrators, cricketers, tennis players, journalists … all trailblazers in her own way, each inspiring, each influential.

These are the 30 women who have helped shape the Australian sporting landscape over the past 30 years.

A lot has changed in Australian sport over the past 30 years, as leagues turn more professionals, further elite pathways established and records continue to tumble.

For women’s sport in particular, there has been a noticeable shift in three decades as it garners more sponsorship, marketing and broadcast time.

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Today, women athletes such as cricketer Ellyse Perry, footballer Erin Phillips and soccer superstar Sam Kerr are household names alongside their male counterparts.

Among the 30 women on this list is former Australian cricket captain Belinda Clark, who retired from the game in 2005.

Clark says attention is often paid to how much women’s sport has improved, but she argues that all sport is constantly improving.

“We see it more in the women’s game because it was invisible, but now it’s visible,” she says.

“But I argue that every single sport is getting incrementally better every year, it’s just you don’t notice it (as much in the men’s codes) until you go back and watch a replay of a game from 1990-something.”

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Stars such as Sam Kerr have put Australian women’s sport on the map.

Clark says what’s changed most since her playing days is the volume of play for today’s current crop of female athletes and the opportunities for them both at home and abroad.

“And it’s not just cricket, I watch the AFLW, I watch the soccer and it’s just so refreshing to know I’ve seen these players the previous week, I’ve read about them in the paper, there is a depth of personalities and people you don’t just know one person in each national team anymore, you will know people in the domestic leagues and I think that’s really indicative of where we’ve come from and where we’re at now.

“It reminds me of how I consumed male sport as a kid: that you’d know all the players in the team, so women’s sport is starting to feel like that and it’s just really nice.”

For one of Australia’s greatest ever basketballers, Lauren Jackson, it’s the rise of social media that is the real game changer for women’s sport because it’s given athletes a new platform to action change in the social justice space through campaigns including Black Lives Matter.

The eight-time WNBA All-star says women athletes are rising to the occasion off the court as well as on it and helping to change society for the better.

Ellyse Perry has become one of the country’s most recognisable athletes.

“When I think back to when I was an athlete I definitely tried to stand up for everything I believe in, but there just wasn’t that platform,” she muses

“And now female athletes have the platform and they are doing incredible things with it and I think that’s something really remarkable.”

Jackson says to see women have the same pathways available to them as the men into elite sport is also incredible.

“And now it’s about trying to find some equity in pay and recognition,” she says.

“Equity in pay, is something that I think all female athletes deserve, but there’s still a massive gap.”

Having retired from her sport in 2016, last year the four-time Olympian took on the role as head of women’s league, WNBL at Basketball Australia.

“For me personally, I want to make things better for our athletes, I want to take our league to a much higher standard, the WNBL has been around for 41 seasons and we’re the longest-running elite women’s competition in Australia … I have confidence in myself to know that I could definitely create change and move the league forward and be a part of something really special with Basketball Australia.”

THE FULL TOP 30 WILL BE RELEASED AT 7AM ON MONDAY

Originally published as Australian basketball legend Lauren Jackson says pay equity needed for men’s and women’s athletes