Gender Pay Inequality in Professional Sports: How Policy Shapes a Consistent Divide
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Gender Pay Inequality in Professional Sports: How Policy Shapes A Consistent Divide Is it possible for male and female professional athletes to receive equal compensation? A look at how gender pay inequality persists in the policies that govern three professional sports and whether there is room for policy intervention. Undergraduate Honors Thesis Sanford School of Public Policy Duke University Durham, NC Ellie Winslow February 2021 Winslow 2 Acknowledgements Thank you to both of my advisors, Penny Fleming and Alison Hagy, for your guidance and support throughout this process. Thank you for challenging me to think more critically about my conclusions. I am grateful to Penny for continuing to support my goals beyond being my pre-major advisor. Thank you to Professor Hagy for encouraging me to see my ideas through a different lens. I also want to thank my family and friends for their continued encouragement. This research combines three important areas of interest for me: gender equality, public policy, and sports. I am so grateful to have the opportunity to explore disciplines that I am passionate about. Thank you to the Sanford School of Public Policy for providing a program that allows undergraduates to dive deeper into the policies that concern them most. Winslow 3 Table of Contents Introduction………………………………………………………………………………………4 Background………………………………………………………………………………………7 Theoretical Framework………………………………………………………………………….9 Hypothesis and Observable Implications………………………………....………………...…...11 Methods…………………………………………………………………………………………..12 Data Collection + Analysis……………………………………………………………………....14 Comparative Policy Analysis Across Sports…………………………………………………..15 Policy Analysis of Professional Basketball………………………………………………………16 Policy Analysis of Professional Soccer………………………………………………………..…23 Policy Analysis of Professional Tennis……………………………………………………..……29 Comparison of Domestic Television Broadcast Equity Across Sports………………………34 Reflections and Potential for Policy…………………………………………………………...41 Conclusion…………………………………………………………………………...………….48 References……………………………………………………………………………………….50 Winslow 4 Introduction Gender equality is important for allowing today’s children to strive to be as successful as they can be regardless of their gender. The world’s population is made up of 49.6% women and girls (Ritchie, 2019). Despite this statistic, gender inequality persists in workplaces, educational systems, and in cultures around the world. Gender equality matters because women continue to be underrepresented in political leadership which often decides the lives that women lead (United Nations, 2015). In the workplace, gender inequality affects a woman's ability to work high-paying jobs and gain a higher social status. Likewise, gender inequality in the education system limits opportunities for young students to learn essential skills that can help them be as successful as their male counterparts later in life (United Nations, 2015). Lastly, gender inequality in professional sports causes fewer women to pursue careers as professional athletes. Fewer spots for female professional athletes sponsorships and they are less lucrative compared to those of their male counterparts (Kosofsky, 1993). Evidently, gender equality affects everyone and matters for creating a world where everyone can achieve their greatest potential in any field they pursue. In this paper, I will look more closely at the vast gender pay inequality that exists in professional American sports. In particular, I will focus on professional basketball, soccer, and tennis in the United States. The world of sports is constantly changing and in the last twenty years with the advancement of technology, sports viewership, and sponsorships in America, sports have become a large commodity. The men’s teams over the years have become significantly more popular than the women’s teams across various sports. In professional basketball, for example, viewership for the 2019 NBA Finals surpassed 15 million viewers, whereas the average viewership per game for the entire 2018-2019 season for the WNBA was Winslow 5 231,000 viewers (Jope, 2019). Statistics show that even over the last forty years, men’s sports teams significantly outweigh women’s teams in network airtime (Lee, 2017). Professional basketball is an example of a highly unequal professional sports league in terms of viewership, endorsement deals for athletes, and in athlete salaries. The highest paid male basketball player is Stephen Curry who earns $40 million per year compared to the highest paid female basketball player, Brittney Griner, who earns $113,500 per year (Jope, 2019). Ratings for the 2019 women’s basketball season had a 200% increase in ratings, but this rating is still 0.6 (Jope, 2019). These ratings and viewership statistics directly impact how each of these organizations fares financially. The National Basketball Association (NBA) sells more tickets and has more viewers which allows it to support its athletes more (Jope, 2019). The market plays a large role in the salaries for athletes. The comparison between the statistics of the NBA and WNBA presents a stark gender inequality, but not all professional American sports are experiencing this drastic disparity. In 1973, with the help of Grand Slam tennis champion and advocate for gender equality, Billie Jean King, equal pay was granted to men and women singles title winners in the U.S. Open (Popovich, 2015). This was the first professional tennis event to award equal prize money for male and female champions. In 2007, Wimbledon was the last Grand Slam tennis event to finally grant equal prize money to winners of both genders (Popovich, 2015). Professional tennis has made the greatest strides toward gender equality compared to the other two sports. Moreover, the U.S. Women’s National Soccer Team (USWNT) is currently involved in a gender discrimination lawsuit against the U.S. Soccer Federation (Cash, 2020). The USWNT has won the last two FIFA World Cup Championships and four of the last eight. Per U.S. soccer’s audited financial statements, from 2016-2018, the USWNT generated $50.8 million in revenue versus the men’s Winslow 6 $49.9 million (U.S. Soccer Financial Information, 2018). In the 2014 FIFA World Cup, the winning men's team came home with over 17 times more prize money than the champion women's team (Morra, 2015). It should also be noted that the U.S. Men’s National Soccer Team did not qualify to compete in the 2018 FIFA World Cup. While the USWNT generated greater revenue between 2016-2018, the team receives lower game earnings and poorer support from the U.S. Soccer Federation compared to the USMNT. The players are successful in their sport, yet they still are unable to achieve gender pay equality. In 1973 when women’s professional tennis reached a landmark agreement to grant gender equal pay in major matches, more female tennis players who dreamed of pursuing a career in professional tennis saw this as a new opportunity. However, these needs have not been met for women competing in other sports. Is there room for policy beyond college athletics to lessen or diminish the gender pay discrepancy between professional men’s and women’s sports? In this paper, I will consider whether there is a role for policy beyond college athletics, that will ensure gender pay equality in professional sports. To answer this question, I will do a comparative case study of three sports leagues to determine whether policy could positively influence greater gender pay equity in professional American sports. The sports programs that I will analyze are international professional tennis (a sport in which gender equality in terms of awarded prize money at major events has been equalized), the U.S. Men’s and Women’s National Soccer teams (an anomaly sport where the women’s national team outperforms the men’s team, yet receives a smaller paycheck), and professional American basketball (a sport where gender pay inequality is substantial). In the comparative policy analysis, I will examine the collective bargaining agreements for the NBA and WNBA as well as for the U.S Men’s and Women’s National Teams. Professional tennis Winslow 7 operates differently as it is an individual sport and the U.S. Tennis Association operates to schedule American athletes and support them in international competition. For professional tennis, I will assess the equal and unequal aspects of the sport. In addition to the comparative policy analysis, I will assess television coverage and network television contracts across the three sports. This section will focus on television broadcast equality of men’s and women’s major events. Policy to ensure gender equality took college athletics to a new level and brought more women into college sports. Ultimately, I plan to consider whether a similar policy can have a similar result in professional athletics. I will collect data by doing an in-depth content analysis of scholarly literature, news reports, and journals. In Section II, I will discuss background information on Title IX and the significance of policy in athletics at the college level. In Section III, I will conduct a literature review that addresses what other authors have considered about the factors that created the gender pay disparity in professional sports. In Sections IV, I will complete the comparative policy analysis of the collective bargaining agreements and equal aspects of the three sports. I will present evidence-based findings about each of the three sports and what makes each of them unique in the pursuit of gender pay equality. In Section V, I will discuss television broadcast coverage of one major event for each of the three events. In Section VI, I will analyze the data I have gathered about the three sports and indicate where policy may fit in to encourage gender pay equality. Section VII will conclude the paper. I will conclude with limitations and potential future realities as they pertain to gender pay equality in professional athletics. Background Winslow 8 In the past, we have seen how policy has improved gender equality in college sports. Prior to 1972, there was no federal requirement to ensure gender equality in schools or in the academic setting.