By Daniel Akst 

Women in sports have come a long way since Babe Didrikson Zaharias and Billie Jean King. Yet the financial distance between today's female pros and their male counterparts, whose earnings have soared into the stratosphere, is probably larger than ever.

What accounts for this? Is it sex discrimination, inexorable market forces or some combination of the two? This Wall Street Journal roundtable explores the contentious issue with the University of Michigan's Carol Hutchins, the most successful softball coach in National Collegiate Athletic Association history; College of the Holy Cross sports economist and NCAA soccer referee Victor Matheson; and University of San Francisco economist Nola Agha, a sports-finance expert who has consulted to professional leagues. The discussion was edited for space and clarity.

The pay question

WSJ: Let's start with the big question: Are women in sports unfairly underpaid compared with men?

DR. AGHA: Yes, nearly always. Professional tennis tournaments are a rare example where men and women receive equal prize money, but in team-based sports, there are stark differences in pay. Although it is not easy to compare men's and women's leagues, the Women's National Basketball Association and National Basketball Association are perhaps the easiest example. In the 1954-55 NBA season, the ninth year of the league, players received 45% of league operating income. This grew to 59% and has fallen back to about 50% in the most recent collective-bargaining agreement. In 2017, WNBA players got just 21% of league revenue.

DR. MATHESON: OK, I'm playing the heavy, so I'll say it: The money isn't there. The average WNBA team generates only about $5 million annually, while the typical NBA team grossed roughly $300 million last season. The new WNBA labor agreement will raise the players' share of revenue to 50/50 as soon as 2021 if the league reaches certain revenue milestones. But even this would leave the average salary at around $200,000, up from $116,000 in 2019. That compares to $7.7 million for the NBA. Other women's leagues, such as the National Women's Soccer League and National Pro Fastpitch, suffer from similar revenue shortfalls compared to their male counterparts.

DR. AGHA: Fairness is about equitable or proportional access to resources. Organizations like U.S. Soccer say that because revenues attributable to women's soccer are lower, women should be paid less. But as you can see from the WNBA example, women are not paid equitably; they have historically received a much smaller portion of leaguewide revenue.

DR. MATHESON: "Percentage of revenue" isn't the only fairness metric. The WNBA is kept afloat by subsidies from the NBA, whose commissioner, Adam Silver, says the women's league has lost an average of more than $10 million per season since its formation in 1996. Doubling the share of revenue paid to WNBA players would more than double the losses suffered by the league's owners. It's not clear why "fairness" would dictate that the WNBA's owners should shoulder losses in the neighborhood of $25 million a year.

WSJ: Coach Hutchins, what's the situation in big-time college sports? Are women treated fairly?

MS. HUTCHINS: Men coach all but 1% to 3% of men's teams and hold more than half the head-coaching jobs for women's teams. Title IX created more opportunities for female athletes, but as opportunities and salaries increased, so did the number of males invading women's athletics. And male coaches largely are paid much better than female coaches.

Women coaches are let go at higher rates than men, and students report "abuse" by female coaches who are tough on them or hold them accountable. I know of instances where a female coach has been told by her supervisor to be "more nurturing." I doubt Bobby Knight was ever given that instruction.

Women are expected to exhibit the "pink traits," meaning to be kind, nurturing caretakers. Men are expected to exhibit "blue traits," meaning to be tough, demanding, driven, intense. So when females exhibit blue traits, which of course are just traits of leadership, we are often held to a different standard.

DR. MATHESON: There is no doubt college and professional sports have had a problem in hiring women as coaches. No woman has ever been hired as a head coach in any of the major men's sports leagues -- although San Antonio Spurs assistant coach Becky Hammon may break that barrier sometime soon -- and I can't fault the NCAA women's basketball coaches who've committed to hiring only female assistants to provide opportunities for women.

But when it comes to both coaches' and players' salaries, it always comes back to revenue. Hiring a football or men's basketball coach who can bring a national championship to the University of Michigan will have a financial impact on the institution that Coach Hutch's 2005 National Championship in women's softball can't match. So, Michigan is willing to spend more on a men's basketball coach than on a women's softball coach, even one who is the winningest in NCAA history!

The feedback loop

WSJ: So, does nonfinancial sex discrimination feed back into the pay system, causing women in sports to be paid less?

DR. AGHA: As Coach Hutchins mentioned, it is not just female athletes who are underpaid, but female coaches as well. The source of that pay disparity is entirely a choice made by leaders, managers or athletic directors to undervalue the contributions of female coaches. Research from Lindsey Darvin, Ann Pegoraro, and David Berri found that male and female coaches had equivalent abilities to affect player performance. Male coaches do not get better results but are paid more.

DR. MATHESON: The Darvin paper does show that, within the WNBA and women's college basketball, men are not better coaches than women, but neither does it show that male coaches are paid more than women in those contexts. In fact, a study by Brad R. Humphreys finds the opposite. Within women's college basketball, controlling for experience and success, female coaches slightly outearn their male counterparts. The source of the inequality is that men's college basketball coaches are paid far more than women's. However, the fact that women are excluded from the much higher-paying men's-coaching ranks is clearly wildly discriminatory.

DR. AGHA: In terms of athletes, consider that female basketball players in Europe are paid substantially more than WNBA players. Why? In sports economics we define owner motivations as win maximization or profit maximization. In Europe, where win-maximizing leagues predominate, players are paid a higher proportion of revenue for virtually all sports and all genders, while a typical profit-maximizing owner in the U.S. will offer a lower proportion. One system looks at players as an investment in future revenues, while the other looks at players as a cost.

When college athletic departments claim they cannot pay coaches equally, they use revenue as an excuse. A male and a female volleyball coach will work the same number of hours, play the same number of games, travel equivalent distances and spend roughly the same number of days away from home. It is entirely possible to find a system that equitably pays coaches of both genders for sports of different popularity, as Harvard was able to do in 2018.

Similarly, U.S. Soccer claims they cannot pay their men's and women's national teams equally because of revenue disparities. But they make scant efforts to promote and sell the women's national team, whose members run the same number of laps, do the same number of sit-ups, and spend the same amount of time training.

[U.S. Soccer says it has offered the Women's National Team Players Association "identical compensation" with the men but "they have repeatedly declined our invitation to meet on the premise that our proposal does not include U.S. Soccer agreeing to make up the difference in future prize money" awarded by soccer's governing body for the Men's and Women's World Cups.]

DR. MATHESON: While the U.S. Women's National Soccer Team certainly does lots of things better than the men's team, like winning World Cups, they still struggle to generate revenue at the same rate as the men. Every team that makes the men's World Cup brings home at least $8 million whether they win a game at the tournament or not. Because of lower television and gate revenue at the women's tournament, the U.S. women brought home only $4 million in 2019 for winning the whole thing.

In fairness, though, we can't say men's pro-sports salaries are solely the product of market forces. I track public subsidies in this area, and the big five U.S. men's pro-sports leagues have received $30 billion in taxpayer support for new stadiums and arenas since 1990. The big leagues get further taxpayer handouts in the form of municipal-bond interest exemptions, property-tax exemptions, below-market stadium-rental rates, stadium-maintenance subsidies, etc.

MS. HUTCHINS: No one questions that football and men's basketball generate revenue for athletics departments. But my observation, my many conversations with colleagues, and the many lawsuits that have erupted over the years showcase that men are typically treated better. And men's programs are often valued by athletic directors at a higher level.

At Michigan, softball has had more success than baseball, we have more visibility on campus, we sell out every game and have been much more popular [than men's baseball] in Ann Arbor. But the attention and the hoopla for the men when they made their 2019 College World Series run was triple what we receive for ours. Now, to be fair, my athletic director treats me very well. I am on my third contract here. But every contract I have signed, all but the latest of which was with a prior athletic director, was only because they offered our baseball coach a contract, and I had to speak out and seek equity. The current athletic director has definitely stepped up, and Michigan softball is now treated much better than women's sports in most places. We are an outlier.

[The Michigan sports program had no comment.]

DR. AGHA: Coach Hutch gives a perfect example of decision makers who value men's sport over women's. It leads to unequal treatment, which leads to further inequities in revenue and wages. We see the same in the media, with broadcasters and websites giving far less attention to women's sports. Imagine how successful women's sports would be if decision makers, of any gender, chose to invest in women's sports equal to their investment in men's.

Closing the gap

WSJ: If revenue disparities are a major driver of pay disparities, how can women's sports make more money? Do we need to build a larger female fan base?

DR. MATHESON: It's not incumbent on female fans to take a greater interest in women's teams. It's about all sports fans taking an interest. The single biggest thing any person can do to promote pay equity in sports is become a women's sports fan. Go to the 2023 Women's World Cup in Australia, watch some WNBA games on TV, or buy a ticket to see Coach Hutch's team try to win a record 22nd Big Ten Championship.

MS. HUTCHINS: As far as professional sport, clearly we need to increase the fan base and interest. What if the media gave as much attention to Sue Bird, or any of the WNBA players, as it does LeBron James? Women's national soccer does everything better than the men's team, yet they have to file a lawsuit for equal pay.

DR. AGHA: Despite starting decades after male leagues and then years of unequal access to media, sponsors, marketing, PR, government subsidies, broadcasting income and long-term owner/investors, women's leagues have fared remarkably well -- for example, the WNBA drew higher ratings and attendance than Major League Soccer for many years. Imagine how successful women's sports would be if decision makers chose to invest in women's sports equal to their investment in men's. There is no reason to doubt they could be equally profitable if given the same opportunities.

Mr. Akst is a writer in New York's Hudson Valley. He can be reached at reports@wsj.com.

 

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

October 27, 2020 10:14 ET (14:14 GMT)

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