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In this Discussion
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Equality in Sport.
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Comments
I want to watch women in sport, just as long as it's beach volleyball. Nothing else though, just beach volleyball
I started to reply to this and had automatically assumed you were talking about football and thought you had confused World and European. So, obviously, no - I didn't know it was on but, to be fair it's unlikely I would if it was for the men. To carry on down my muddled path though, I think women's football is getting better, and, similar to you, I was asked if I'd like to go to the next international. I'm definitely considering it - time allowances being my concern rather than the quality on show. I watched the last World Cup on TV and even stayed up into the small hours for a couple of the games. Not the standard of the men's game but not as woeful as it was even 10 years ago.
To be pedantic, I don't think you can say any match can be judged on time played or points scored (Mahut & Isner would be sunning themselves on their private islands if they were). However, the women only play best of three in Grand Slams and that is clearly not equal. I think what frustrates me more about women's tennis is that the biggest names are often celebrated for having GS titles that the men will never have - if Nadal, Federer, Murray etc. entered the doubles or mixed doubles they may as well phone up the others and tell them that they knew they couldn't win it that year. There is a tongue-in-cheek argument that the women tennis players should be allowed to earn the same as the men for playing fewer sets because no one really wants to sit through 5 sets of women's tennis.
However, the women's game appears to be on the rise quite dramatically and it is quite possible that in 5 years some of the best matches and rivalries will come from the women's side; I may be pining for 5 sets then.
The world is changing though and this whole thread may soon be moot:
http://edition.cnn.com/2017/03/23/health/transgender-weightlifter-controversy-trnd/
There are lots of valid points, and I don't think there is a solution that would make everybody happy.
This week the local radio was running a news article about some group wanting RBS shareholders to rebel due to only 23% of top executive being women. This kind of thing must put employers in a tough situation. Do they employee a woman just because she's a woman, rather than a man who may be better experienced for the job?
The company I work for, has in the past had a female managing director, and she was by the far the best from an employee view, compared with her two male successors. Although she had little experience in our industry, she employed people who did know the industry, and took their advice to run the company. The man who replaced her, over the period of a couple years got rid of those under him, and replaced them with a mix of people from outwith the industry, and a couple colleagues from his previous company, so ended up surrounded by people with very little knowledge of the industry. The result is no body has any faith in senior management to actually run the company, with decisions that regularly leave those of us dealing with customers wondering WTF?
I do currently have another woman as a national manager, who does her job very well. Again she came from outwith the industry, but she's learnt and taken advice from those who do know the industry, with the result people respect her, unlike a lot of the male managers who you often wonder if they have any clue as to what they're doing.
Getting back to sport, I'm involved with mountain biking. There has been moves in recent years to address the imbalance, but it's not been without controversy. Several high profile events now pay even prize money to men and women. Now given a typical event will only see about 10-20% women, should they be getting 50% of the money?
If you were to combine the categories, you would be lucky to get one or two women in the top 50% at any high level event.
Being honest, few people really want to watch the women, for the main reason it's not competitive. The men are regularly battling it out with sub second time differences. Women you can pretty much look at start lists, pick out the winner, then debate how many seconds/minutes they'll be ahead of everybody else.
Despite there being more women involved, I very much doubt it will ever be a truly even. How many women really want to go hurtling around the hillside risking injury regularly?
But there is the other side, which is blatantly wrong. I know a local women who missed out on a sponsorship deal, because she didn't have a high profile brother, and wasn't as camera friendly, despite regularly being much faster, and doing more high profile events.
And here's a video I watched a while back, about the gender pay gap, which provided some food for thought -
Cricket is not unique in the sense that women could play in the mens team if they were good enough.
Women bowlers get nowhere near as fast as men's bowling. Granted, he has retired, but can you see Mitchell Johnson/Dale Steyn running in at full pelt and bowling 90 mph if they saw a lady batting at the other end? Even if they were good enough, and I'm sure some are, the male bowlers would reign it in a little bit. I think the women's game is up and coming and has been on the icnrease for the last 10 years.
Saying that...was there not a UK lady playing in the BBL this year? Or training with one of the teams?
1. Spot on - even though the performances of the England team, in general, have been superb over the past 10 years, cricket in the UK has been dying a slow death since the 2005 ashes ironically. No free-to-air cricket means nobody is watching. The ECB have recently announced the new IPL Twenty20 format with at least 50% of games being on free-to-air TV. Hope so, but thats still not enough.
2. Yes - people pay to watch the best /mos entertaining players. When Freddie Flintoff and KP were playing for England, when either came out to bat or when Freddie came on to bowl, the bars would empty. (bars are always full at cricket grounds). People wanted to watch. Same with Ben Stokes and Jos Buttler in the current team. I don't pay for my Lords ticket to watch Alistair Cook nurdle a 300 ball 110. (as much as I appreciate it)
3. Yes as above - when the female version of Chris Gayle/Ben Stokes comes along - I'm sure they will be thoroughly rewarded.
4. I think its fair to say the ECB and ACB/ BCCI have invested heavily in womens cricket in recent years. I listen to Test Match Special / cricket on the radio all the time (Mrs wont let me get sky just for cricket purposes) and every other lunch break they are talking about womens cricket and interviewing a female cricketer. Plus,Emily Rainford Brent is a quality commentator who knows her stuff.
5. No. As you elude to yourself, its about who brings the money in. When women's cricket really draws the crowds....and it will....then yes fair enough.
I suspect, Clare Conor, being an ex England player is probably a bit gutted at having played in the wrong era with regards to earning potential - just like male cricketers today. Ed Giddins used to be a taxi driver in the off-season. Male cricketers these days get well paid.
Hasn't the ladies setup as recently as this year or back end of 2016 announced incremental contracts for the first time ever?
Yes, I like watching badminton.
I'm not locked in here with you, you are locked in here with me.
Bouchard - Sharapova in the Madrid Open had it all: very high quality tennis, intense rivalry (stemming from Bouchard's comments about Sharapova's drugs use), and a nail-biting finish. More of that please.
The lower down the pay scale you go, the less popular the sport and therefore the bigger chance of pay equality. Could the governing bodies do more to get women into sport and promote women's sport? Probably. But without revenue generation, the pay gap will stay.
For me it's all about supply and demand. I'll guestimate numbers but let's say there are 10m male kids/young adults who play football. Big money is in the prem which is 20 teams, each with around 23 squad players, that's 460 people out of 10m wannabes who actually make it. So if you are one of those talented enough to make it you are in the top 0.0046% of 10m. Bear in mind as well that the average prem footballer will have spent nearly all of their free time from 4 or 5 to, let's say 17 before they crack it. In all likelihood several hours a day, every day in that time period.
That's a lot more time invested than it takes to become a Doctor with a high salary by a long way. If you are in the top 1% talent wise in any profession you are going to earn well, let alone the being in the top 0.0046%. Also, anyone with enough drive and perseverance can become a Doctor if they really really want to, it's ultimately just book learning. Not anyone can be the best in sport, it takes a special genetic disposition (fast or slow twitch muscle fibres depending on sport, height, build etc). If you mock footballers for doing a ridiculous thing for ridiculous money why not do it yourself? Short answer is you can't which is why I think the salaries are obscene ethically but are justified. Morally 'superior' jobs such as being a nurse are much easier to do/get into. While the job serves a much more useful purpose, anyone could do it so the salary reflects that.
Anyway, I'm off topic slightly. To answer the actual question; as long as there are less women trying to become the best in a sport than men, the standard will be lower and it's only fair earnings reflect that. Truth is that's exactly how things are for the majority of sports including cricket. How many boys played cricket when you were at school compared to girls? Exactly.
Equality demands a modelling contract for Davie Dods. (The poor footballer who had half of Scotland´s crowd´s singing Davie dods, Davie Dods, Davie Dods the Elephant Man)
The worry I have is that women's sport could essentially disappear completely if some of the transgender campaigners get their way. They are already letting Caster Semanya compete as a women. She's a difficult case, but if intersex athletes are allowed to compete as women then what is a the point of competing for other women. If you make women compete with the men, or allow intersex or transgender athletes to compete then women's sport will die completely.
At slams the hourly rate is higher IF you only consider them to be earning while on court (though most of the players would probably consider themselves to be "at work" while training). However, for the other 40+ weeks a year the prize money from women's tournaments is significantly lower than men's and they are all 3 set tournaments for men and women.
The average earnings for WTA players is noticeably (if not massively) less than ATP players even though they have historically had comparable box-office draw (Borg, Becker and Sampras are probably about as well known as Graf, Navratilova and B-J King etc). At the moment the men's game is much more popular since the Big Four have made it interesting and this will be skewing gate/sponsorship which in turn affects prize money. When the cycle comes back around and it's the WTA game that is the bigger draw (like when Sampras was boring everyone) then it will be extremely interesting to see if the ladies overtake the fellas.