Low Salaries

After all the improvements made to women’s athletics, women still face many barriers when perusing an athletic career, one of which is low salaries.  In a study conducted by the NCAA 75% of female collegiate athletes were interested in a career that offered a reasonable salary.  Coaches of women’s teams are found to be paid less than coaches of men’s teams; in addition to male coaches who coach other women’s teams. According to the Feminist Majority Foundation, In Basketball, men’s coaches are paid an average of $71,511 while their female counterparts made only $39, 1777.  Even in female dominated sports such as gymnastics men receive greater financial gratification.    When addressing the disparities between men’s and women’s salaries one former ODU athlete stated: 

When I was at ODU, somebody had brought up the issue of my coach, Wendy Larry that [coach] Blaine Taylor (ODU Men’s Basketball Coach) was making more than she was, but Wendy is winning more championships. How is that right? He comes in making about the same or making way more than what’s she’s making and she’s won how many championships?  What’s the reason he’s making more and she wins consecutive championships? She is doing better than him. 

She later contended that:

He’s won one CAA tournament.  How many has she won?  It’s going on eighteen or nineteen.

In the division I level, men’s sports are offered by schools far more frequently than for women’s sports.  The average coaches salaries for coaches coaching at men’s division I schools was $625,396 while for women coaches the average was only $227,871 (Feminist Majority Foundation 1995). 

                In professional sports, the discriminatory gap widens.  It is regarded that sports is one of the only few arenas that continues to be blatantly dominated by men; also sport’s impregnable glass ceilings is one most women can penetrate.  In professional sports, the average women’s salary in the Women’s National Basketball Association (WNBA)  during the 1999-2000 season was $55,000; one the other hand, the average National Basketball Association salary (NBA) was 3.17 million (Gregory, DePaul University). In addition, women hold few or known of the top level management positions available in professional sports, offering only 14% in the NFL, 4% in the MLB, and 45% in the WUSA or Women’s United States Soccer Association.  Perhaps nowhere else I n societies will you find such patriarchal dominance in one field where men hold most of the positions in professional men’s sports, they also have significant representation in women’s sports as well.