User:Sienavasan08/Evaluate an Article

Which article are you evaluating?
Gender pay gap in sports

Why you have chosen this article to evaluate?
I chose to evaluate this article because I have been an equestrian athlete since I was four years old. I have always been interested in sports so I thought that it would be fitting for me to choose this article, especially because riding in the United States remains female-dominated. Evaluating this article will allow me to expand my horizons and learn more about how women remain underpaid in professional sports in comparison to men. I also feel that it would be interesting to discuss (or possibly include) a section about the role of gender in professional sports. The amount of transgender athletes pursuing professional sports today has created considerable controversy, and I feel that it would be interesting to incorporate this into the article

Evaluate the article
Lead Section

The lead section does include an introductory sentence that clearly defines the article's topic, as it clarifies the "persistence of unequal pay in sports, particularly for female athletes." However, the lead section does not include a brief description of the article's major sections. Instead, the lead section focuses primarily on statistics and prolific female athletes who have defied the norm. The lead section is concise, but I feel that it could do a better job of providing a framework for the rest of the article.

Content

The article's content is relevant to the topic and relatively up-to-date. Most of the statistics come from the years 2014-2018 so there could be some improvement in this regard in addition to the inclusion of more current statistics and facts concerning the issue. While there isn't necessarily content that's missing, I believe that some of the information could be updated to reflect current societal trends and the status of gender pay gaps in sports today. As I mentioned before, I also feel that it would be helpful and relevant to include a section on how transgender athletes play a role.

Tone and Balance

The article is written in a neutral manner and does not appear to have any explicit bias. It could be argued that implicit bias exists towards giving female athletes higher pay, but that remains in line with the tone and subject of the article. I also feel that minority and fringe viewpoints could be added to this article since the article currently lacks them. Finally, I don't feel that the article intentionally persuades the reader in favor of one position over another, but given the information in the article, a reasonable person would consider that professional female athletes should be paid more in-line with their male counterparts.

Sources and References

The article currently contains 70 sources which signifies that a lot of research has been done. Additionally, it seems that relevant facts are backed up by sources for the most part. And while the sources are thorough, not all of them are current. I feel that sources from the years 2014-2017 should be reanalyzed in order to see if their content still remains relevant to the article. While the sources come from a variety of different places, ranging from news outlets to books to journals, historically marginalized individuals are not included aside from female authors. I also feel that the quality of some of the sources should be improved, media outlets and blogs often contain bias or a sensationalist view. Fortunately though, the links to all of the sources seem to work.

Organization and writing quality

The article is very well-written and easy to follow, and I found the article to be straightforward. I don't see any grammatical or spelling errors and I also feel that the article is well-organized by section.

Images and media

The article contains 5 images but I feel that they could be improved. In my opinion, the most relevant image is a graph which shows the income of the top 10 highest-paid female and male athletes based on the statistics released by Forbes in 2017. This demonstrates that in comparison to men, professional female athletes are paid far less which directly aligns with the article's topic. Another image shows Serena Williams, the highest-paid athlete in 2017. However, I feel that the caption for this image could be altered since it currently only provides that information. The images and media in this article should be adjusted to include more prolific female athletes in addition to data that better supports the content within the article. The images should also be realigned since there's currently one cluster of 3 images and 2 more images in random places (one of which has little relevance to the article as it's just the U.S. Open's logo). It does seem that all of the images adhere to Wikipedia's copyright regulations though.

Talk page discussion

The talk page for this article does not show much recent activity. I can see that the article has been utilized 10 times (including for myself) for a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment. A peer review from 2019 states that this is a "great article with great structure [and] a lot of information that covers the topic very well. I would suggest putting the number of views female athletes get compared to male athletes. This would be a major factor in their pay." Within the peer review section, another person noted that "this article is utter B.S. It compares the best professional leagues with minor ones. In most sports, the so-called masculine category is actually open to anyone able to play at a certain level regardless of their sex, that is, any woman can do it and earn as much as a man if she is good enough. Since this does not happen often, there are feminine leagues to give women a chance to play sports in fair conditions. Audience, sponsors and any one else, however, are more interested in elite sports than championships tailored to let substandard players have a go. The Williams and that unknown 3rd rate masculine player's affair should give you an idea of what place occupy women sports in the big picture. Enjoy your sports, but don't ask to earn as a pro when an the average high school player can beat the best feminine player in the world any time." Clearly, the second peer review feels passionate (arguably angry) about the current state of the article which signifies that more research could be done to remedy certain gaps in logic. However, this peer reviewer seems to be an extreme outlier. Finally, one more individual wrote under "Article Suggestions" that history of the gender pay gap in sports dating back to the 1940s should be added in addition to information about the Hope Solo lawsuit and the future of women's pay in professional sports.

Also, this is an S-class article.

Overall impressionsI feel that this article has a solid foundation; however, significant improvements need to be made. The statistics in this article, for the most part, should be more recent. I also believe that this article would benefit from having section(s) that discuss current social trends related not only to the gender pay gap in sports. This would be a great opportunity to discuss the role of transgender athletes within the gender pay gap. Additionally, the images need to be updated and re-captioned to reflect the topic and overall theme of the article. In my opinion, the strength of this article stems from its organization and the level of clarity with which it's written. Still, the article could be more fleshed out and well-developed.