THE FACTS OF LIFE

               The gender pay gap in the United States—the difference in wages between men and women in the work force—amounts to about 20%, which is to say that women are paid about 80 cents for each dollar men make. The gap has proved stubborn to overcome but it’s declining and could someday disappear. Maybe.

               For now, however, Average Worker Jane is much envied by her sisters who make their living in sports. There the gap is more like a chasm, a veritable Grand Canyon. Peering into it, 80 cents on the buck only can seem like a really good deal.

               The issue of pay equity in sports was raised forcefully during the recent Women’s World Cup of soccer, won by the U.S. for the second straight time and forth in seven editions. Even before cash-in time members of the victorious team were publicly asserting that however they fared they’d come out worse financially than their male counterparts would have done with similar results.

Despite their triumph, played out before large and appreciative domestic television audiences, the American gals each pocketed $250,000 in prize money for their win, compared to the seven-figure sums that went to members of the French team that took home the men’s version of the cup the year before. Additionally, the women claimed that on an annual basis their federation paid them less than members of the U.S. men’s national team, which last year bombed out ignominiously before the final rounds of their quadrennial competition.

               Is this fair?, the women asked. Is it? Is it?

               Fact is that when it comes to sports dollars, the concept of gender equity has little meaning. Men’s games take in much (much) more money from ticket sales, television revenues, sponsorships and any other source than do women’s, so they pay out more. Political considerations to the contrary notwithstanding, that’s not likely to change any time soon.

               The clearest example of this comes in basketball, which also has the most successful of the U.S.’s several women’s professional sports leagues. That status is due in part to the WNBA’s close relationship with the NBA, which launched it in 1997. Seven of the 12 WNBA teams are considered to be “sister” teams to NBA clubs, sharing ownership with the men’s teams in their cities; all 12 receive NBA help with various management functions. In the WNBA’s early years the NBA covered the WNBA’s losses. Bottom lines are better now but men’s league still kicks in where needed.

               WNBA teams average about 7,000 people a game in attendance over its 34-game, May-to-September season, about 40% of the average crowds the men pull, but other differences between the entities are less favorable. The women’s average salary this season will be about $75,000, versus about $6 million among the men; the women’s maximum is $113,500 to about $40 million for the likes of Kevin Durant and Lebron James.

               Playing in the WNBA is a second job for most of its enlistees-- last season 90 of the 144 women on its rosters also played overseas during the fall and winter months, mostly in Europe where six-figure salaries are the rule. In 2015 Diana Taurasi, the WNBA’s best player in recent seasons, sat out the entire WNBA schedule to rest up for her Russian team’s campaign, for which she reportedly was paid $l.5 million.

               From there the comparisons only get worse. In soccer, pay in the six-year-old, nine-team National Women’s Soccer League, where most of the American national-team members perform, the minimum salary is $16,538, the maximum $46,200 and the average about $30,000. That’s less than a tenth of the $414,803 average in the men’s top U.S. league, Major League Soccer, and a pittance compared to the $7.2 million take of the LA Galaxy star Zlatan Ibrahimovic, MLS’s top-paid player.

               In hockey, one North American women’s circuit, the Canadian Women’s Hockey League, went out of business early this year after 11 seasons. That left only the National Women’s Hockey League of the U.S., started in 2015, but it, too, is in trouble as a result of a player’s boycott begun in May. Boycotters want salaries in the five-team loop lifted from present levels (averaging about a $5,000-a-season, according to online sources), and players complain about things like having to supply their own tape and skate laces. Prosperous it ain’t.

               The picture is somewhat better in the individual sport of golf, which can trace its women’s pro roots back to the founding of the Ladies Professional Golf Association in 1950 and its competitive history to a century before that.  The women golfers do okay compared to their sister athletes, with median winnings of $114,000 on the LPGA Tour last year and 14 players collecting $1 million or more. Still, that’s peanuts compared to the U.S. men’s tour, where $1 million-plus- prizes are awarded weekly and 114 guys topped the $1 million-a-season earnings mark in 2018.

               The women do best in tennis, where they also have a long history and share venues and dates with the men at all four of the game’s “majors” (the Australian, French, British and U.S. Opens), events at which pay equity is mandated. Last year’s Women’s Tennis Association money list was headed at $7.4 million by Simona Halep, and while that would place her only fifth on the men’s list it’s not bad comparatively. According to Forbes magazine, eight of the top 10 highest-earning women athletes last year were tennis players, and they also led their gender in off-field earnings.

               But another Forbes list—of the world’s top 100 overall jock earners in 2018—put the pay-gap issue in better perspective. It contained only one female—tennis player Serena Williams—and she ranked 63^rd overall. As the old Virginia Slims ads had it, women may have come a long way “baby,” but they’ve still got a long way to go.