User:ReneeMagnan/Gender pay gap in sports

Endorsement deals
In a 2012 experimental study set out to define the variables determining the effectiveness of female athlete endorsements found that they were perceived as slightly less attractive when playing in gender "inappropriate" sports.

Study between 2011-2013, found female sports account for 0.4% of total sports sponsorships.

Media coverage
It has been argued that visibility of women’s sports in media is necessary for its advancement and is a determining factor in closing the gender pay gap. Broadcasting deals and television exposure play an important role in the ability for athletes to gain sponsors and endorsements. With increased TV marketing comes larger and more profitable sponsors, this gain of profit in an industry will eventually lead to an increase in wages of sportswomen. Despite greatly increased participation of women in sports, over the years media coverage of female athletes has remained unchanged. While coverage of female athletes is lacking in traditional and online media outlets, personal social media accounts offer sportswomen new means to gain exposure, promote themselves, develop a fan base and reconstruct traditional female stereotypes in sport. Whereas a study examined 1,587 images on the Instagram accounts of four major American sports network and found women in gender "appropriate" sports were more likely to be featured along with those appearing nonathletic and next to a male.

In a 2016 study, 99 ESPN sports media videos were analyzed, only 11 covered female athletes.

A 2015 analysis of International sports news websites found the three websites covering the most female athletics dedicated no more than 7% of coverage.

In the Nordic welfare states, comprised of countries ranked as the most gender equalized in the world, international and Nordic studies have found that women still obtain under 10% of routine newspaper or TV sport coverage.

In a 2015 study, Billings and Young compared coverage of women’s sports on ESPN’s SportsCenter and Fox Sports 1’s Fox Sports Live, in which both TV programs were found to cover women’s sports less than 1% of the time.

Televised sports media jobs are also dominated and controlled by men; 90.1% of sports editors and 95% of sports news anchors and co-anchors were found to be male in a 2017 analysis of televised coverage of women's sports.

A study found that this type of sexist language was used in women’s sports coverage in regard to athletes and teams from 1989-2000. Whereas in 2014 language shifted and became “gender bland”, framing women’s sports performances and achievements in uninteresting ways in comparison to men.

Others
In 2020, a new collective bargaining agreement of the WNBA included an improved maternity leave policy allowing players to receive a full salary during their maternity leave.

Statistics
In 2018, the WNBA paid its players much less of their revenue, less than 25%, than the NBA does, about 50%. If the WNBA revenues were shared with its players as the NBA revenues are, their average salary would rise from $77,878 to around $191,083 in the 2018 season.

In 2020 a new WNBA collective bargaining agreement was put in place and will go until 2027. Players in the WNBA will on average earn a salary of $130,000, with minimum and maximum salaries of $68,000 and $215,000 respectively; with the possibility for top athletes to earn over $500,000 annually. The WNBA league will spend up to $250,000 a player and atleast $1 million in promoting and marketing of players annually. Significant change in the revenue sharing could allow players in the WNBA to earn 50% of their revenues as of the 2021 season.

On top of athletes, the gender pay gap is also present in sports industry positions. A PayScale Survey has found that women sport marketing managers and sport event coordinators earn 82 cents and 92 cents respectively, for every dollar a man earns.

Disparities in the wages of female and male head coaches exists, a study on head coaches in Division One programs finds the gender wage gap to be larger in this sports industry. A study done at the University of Northern Colorado involved a sample of 72 head coaches in Division One Basketball across the United States and found that male coaches earned an average of $2,716,191 million, whereas female coaches earned much less with an average salary of $689,879.

Although, women face forms of inequality in sports workplaces, the intersection of gender and race leads to more severe barriers in place for black women in this industry. The lack of women of color in the athletic administrative and coaching positions in sports is greater as they not only face the challenges brought on by gender discrimination but also that of racial discrimination.