Nike has never been one to shy away from socially divisive issues. Their 2018 campaign featuring Colin Kaepernick sparked many a debate, but firmly laid down their stance. The sneaker company has done it yet again, with an emotional ad featuring some of the world’s most prominent female athletes, and encourages the discussion around gender inequality in sport.
Football player featured in the Dream Crazier ad. PHOTO: Nike
Since 2014, female sports stars have been earning less year on year, whilst male professional athletes have enjoyed larger paychecks.
According to Forbes Top 100 Highest Paid Athletes for 2018, the combined earnings of the top five male athletes is nearly 10 times that of female athletes.
What’s more, is that this gap has grown in the last four years, to create an even larger divide.
The total earnings of males and females in millions and dollars, from 2010-2018. SOURCE: Forbes
A comparison of the years 2014 and 2018, show that the collective income of the five highest paid athletes on the women’s side has been dwarfed by that of the men. Men have shown a nearly eighty percent increase in this time, whilst the women have registered a drop of nearly forty percent.
For the most part, this has to do with coverage. Male sporting events lend themselves to larger audiences, which leads to larger TV deals, and therefore more lucrative endorsements to athletes with larger reaches.
However, has society’s need for a more equitable world translated into the sporting disciplines?
“The revenue doesn’t exist in women’s team sports to support blockbuster salaries. Look at basketball. The WNBA’s TV deal with ESPN is worth $25 million per year on average, while the NBA earns $2.5 billion, or 100 times as much, from its national TV deal,” says Kurt Badenhausen, a senior editor at Forbes.
The Forbes Top 100 Highest Paid Athletes for 2018, featured not a single female athlete. Tennis powerhouse, Serena Williams, was the closest woman to making the list, but still fell $5 million short of the hundredth placed male.
Williams missed a large chunk of tennis during her pregnancy and the birth of her child, and is likely to find her way back onto that list come 2019.
However, this is the first time in eight years that there has been no female representation.
In previous years, tennis has been the main avenue for women to enter the top 100. It’s also one of the few heavily viewed sports which has equal prize winnings. Despite this only applying to tennis’ grand slams, and not the sport’s smaller tournaments, it’s offered the best opportunity for female representation.
Since 2007, tennis has been one of 35 sports which pay men and women the same. This means that only nine of the 44 sports that pay athletes do so unequally.
In spite of this, there is still an increasing disparity in pay between male and female athletes.
This is down to the size of the sports with the differing payslips, and the financial backing of them. Amongst these sports are some of the highest paying, such as football, basketball and boxing.
The question then becomes, do women deserve to have the same opportunities as men?
The powerful Nike ad that has gone viral. VIDEO: Nike