Women Sports

The first recorded participation of women in athletics competition is dated around the 6th century BC. At the time in Greece, women could not take part in nor attend the Olympic Games: they were sentenced to death if they even tried to. Instead they had their own athletic competition, the Heraen Games, named after Hera, the goddess of women, marriage and birth. These games featured footraces for women and were held every 4 years, just like the Olympic Games.

During Middle Ages and Renaissance, people enjoyed various activities that are precursors to sports we know today. For instance, there were primitive forms of badminton, football, ice-skating and bowling (the aim was to throw a ball at another human-being). It is very difficult to know what happen to women’s sports during those times. The various documents I found were contradicting one another most of the time, some saying that women were only spectators, others stating that lower-class women could take part in sports and even become professional players.

In any case, all documents agree to say that modern sports appeared in the 19th century. At that time, women enjoyed few powers and were left out of sporting events.

Women started to gain recognition in sports thanks to their first participation in the Olympics in 1900. That year, there were 22 women competing for 975 men. Sailor Hélène de Pourtalès became the first female Olympic champion that year.

It is interesting to notice that the participation of women to the Olympic Games has always been below 50%. In 1960, only 11% of the participants in the Summer Olympics were women.

In 1988, women represented 26% of participants. It was later revealed that some countries were reluctant to get funding for women athletes that year. For example, the Australian swimming federation refused to spend money to send female athletes to compete in the games, they wanted to spend money to fund more participation of male swimmers.

Since it was 25 years ago, we could believe that things have changed, but no later than in 2012, the Japanese female football team and the Australian female basketball team, who took part in the Olympics, flew to London in economic seats whereas their male counterparts flew in business class.

In the 2012 Olympics, the number of female participants reached 45%. It was also the first time women could compete in all sports in the program.

While female discrimination tends to disappear from the Olympics, there is now some kind of male discrimination. Men are excluded from two sports in the Olympics: synchronised swimming and rhythmic gymnastics.

Nowadays, even if women can practice almost every sports, there is still one huge difference with sportsmen which is the amount of money they earn.

Tennis is by far the most lucrative sport for women: Maria Sharapova, Li Na and Serena Williams (wages between 22 and 24 million dollars) are the three highest-paid sportswomen on the planet. They are the only three women on Forbes’ list of the 100 highest-paid athletes of last year. This is easily explained by the fact that women’s tennis is given the same amount of attention than men’s tennis. Men and women play the biggest tennis tournaments simultaneously, and this gives players a lot of exposure which attracts major endorsements.

Despite the fact that equity has been established in tennis for many years, female tennis players’ wages have been highly criticized, with some people considering that women should not earn the same amount of money because their games are less interesting than men’s. Matthew Syed, a former table tennis player, even said that “to deprive Federer of income by handing it to female players is not far from daylight robbery”.

However, equal pay between sportsmen and sportswomen is far from being the norm.

I found two examples that are quite interesting:

• A basketball player who takes part in the NBA earns an average salary of 3.17 million dollars a year. However, a women who plays for the WNBA only makes 55,000 dollars a year.
• It goes the same way in England. Steven Gerrard, who has been the captain of the National England Football Team lately, earns approximately 11 million pounds a year. His female counterpart, Casey Stoney, makes 25,000 pounds a year. Being a football player is only a part-time job for her, she has to have another job in order to make a living.
  

Another “funny” example is the Canadian Women’s Hockey League, where players are not paid at all. Their travel expenses are covered by the team but they don’t have a monthly salary despite being considered professional athletes.

Many reasons can explain the pay gap between male athletes and female athletes.

• Women’s sports don’t get a lot of exposure. You don’t often see a female football or basketball game on TV. It can be argued that women’s sports don’t generate enough interest to justify equality on the pay scale. However, in 2013, a study showed that 70% of the French population would like to see more female matches on TV. Despite that fact, women sports only represent 7% of all sporting competitions broadcasted on French TV, most of the time on private channels like Eurosport.

• Women’s sports don’t attract sponsors. They represent only 3% of all sporting sponsorships. Brands don’t seem ready to bet on women’s sports and when they invest money, they give 5 times less than what they usually spend on men sponsoring. The thing is that, without sponsoring, women athletes have difficulty to gain recognition and they are not given the opportunity to promote their sports. In the UK, it is estimated that 80% of women don’t exercise enough, and that more sponsoring could encourage women to get more involved in sports.

• Finally, it is obvious that old stereotypes still exist: some people firmly believe that women cannot be as good players as men. It is true that women’s bodies are less muscular and that they don’t kick a ball as strongly as men. That is not sexism but pure biology. However women can be just as skilled as men. I’ll finish with the results of the French teams in football, basketball and rugby. Everything is based on worldwide rankings:

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