“Fairness does not mean everyone gets the same. Fairness means everyone gets what they need.”
It is no secret that there is a gender pay gap within the United States. The gender pay gap is the result of many factors, including occupational segregation, bias against working mothers, and direct pay discrimination. Additionally, such things as racial bias, disability, access to education, and age come into play. Consequently, different groups of women experience very different gaps in pay. Nonetheless, overall, women make only $0.79 for every dollar men make in 2019. But let’s take a look at the gender pay gap within sports, particularly basketball.
According to Forbes, in the 2018 WNBA season, the top salary was $117,500 compared to $37.4 million in the NBA. Now, you can say this is due to multiple reasons including billions of dollars spent on television deals. The WNBA recently entered into a multi-year partnership with CBS Sports Network to air 40 games during the 2019 season, and the new pact is in addition to the league’s existing deal with ESPN. More TV exposure for the players will lead to more visibility, and more visibility could lead to major deals with endorsers in the future. Perhaps the WNBA can get a signature shoe with Nike? Nike hasn’t made a signature shoe for a WNBA player in 20 years, the Air Swoopes. Maybe it’s time? There are thousands of little girls who look up to these players and would purchase the merchandise.
When the WNBA players' union opted out of its collective bargaining agreement in November of 2018, Los Angeles Sparks star Nneka Ogwumike, the president of the union, wrote for the The Players' Tribune:
“This is not purely about salaries. This is about small changes the league can make that will impact the players. This is about a six-foot-nine superstar taking a red-eye cross-country and having to sit in an economy seat instead of an exit row.”
The pay disparities in basketball come down almost entirely to the revenue their leagues generate. In order to make a living playing basketball, most WNBA players compete overseas during the offseason to supplement their WNBA income. WNBA players like A’ja Wilson, Brittney Griner, Liz Cambage, and Skylar Diggins-Smith are not necessarily asking for multimillion dollar contracts, but they are asking for equity. According to the Women’s Sports Foundation, NBA players are payed between 49%-51% percent of the league’s revenue and WNBA players take home a maximum of 22.8%.
“As athletes, we have to fight. As women, we have to fight,” Diggins-Smith told Bleacher Report. “And we need more people at our table to fight with us. There needs to be more women and more people of color hired so we can curate our own sports stories. And we need men speaking out about these things.”
On August 3, 2018, the Las Vegas Aces had to forfeit a game after a series of canceled flights left them stranded on the road for more than 25 hours and got them to Washington, D.C., just a few hours before their scheduled tipoff against the Mystics. (Like all WNBA teams, the Aces fly commercial.) Despite the fact that this contest had an impact on the Aces’ playoff chances—the forfeit dropped them two and a half games out of the last playoff spot—all the league did was offer to move the game back an hour and briefly give the team permission to search for a charter flight (though none were available on such short notice).
In my last post I wrote about several women breaking into the NBA and becoming assistant coaches. In the Fall of 2018, Kristi Toliver, 10-year WNBA player, was hired as an assistant coach by the Washington Wizards. When she was hired she was still playing in the WNBA. While she was coaching, she was paid $10,000 a year due to a stipulation in the collective bargaining agreement between the WNBA and its players' union. From the league’s point of view, it is a matter of ensuring competitive balance under the salary cap, which is slightly less than $1 million per team for the season. Because Toliver would be coaching for a team that falls under the same corporate umbrella as the Mystics — Ted Leonsis owns both franchises — her coaching salary must come out of a $50,000 pool allotted to each WNBA team to pay players for offseason work. Because $40,000 had already been promised to three other Mystics players, Toliver accepted what was left.
It is time for women to get what is deserved. And it is time for the NBA to join forces with our women and the WNBA to speak up and speak loud!
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