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)
Copyright (c) 2020 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.