Recently I was on a ski vacation, I’m an avid skier and take my skiing fairly seriously, but on the first day that my life-induced exhaustion was winning the battle over my adventurous nature, the guys in the group began complaining about the length of time it was taking me to do my hair and questioning why I was doing my hair in the first place. Because I want to, was my response; they shut up.
In the days to follow, long after lift lines were gone and shredding slopes was a distant memory, I began to ponder women and sports. In addition to loving to parallel down powder-packed slopes, I love to watch football. I love everything about football. The glistening of the morning dew off the white stripes and green fields, the smell of freshly cut grass, the smacking of helmets, the sweat rolling off brows of exhausted young men, the smudging of reflective black under their serious eyes, the cheering of crowds and enticement by cheerleaders for the fight to go on. I love football. Naturally, my thoughts began turning over the question of how many other women love football too. And as writers often do, those thoughts catapulted to more and more questions, until I finally reached my mental destination of gender income equality in sports. Yes, I know, quite a journey from my original flicker of a thought while doing my hair.
As much as I love football, I’ve never had the inkling to put on pads and a helmet to get flattened into the grass. And in reality, not many women find themselves suited up on a 100 yard field ready to get leveled, and even if they wanted to play, that’s never come to fruition. However, there are more than 1600 men during the regular season who do have the opportunity to get a job as a football player with a base minimum salary beginning around $390,000 and an average salary of $1.9 million. Looking at Major League Baseball incomes, the minimum salary is over $400,000 with an average salary of $3.31 million and around 750 players in the league. Sadly, there’s no sport income equivalent available to women.
Over the past several decades it’s true the gap between the earning power of female athletes and male athletes has become less expansive than the Grand Canyon, but let’s face it, there’s still a wide valley between the zeros on the paychecks. Women athletes can earn money on many fields, slopes and courts, but is the cold hard truth that there will never be a time in our history when women athletes will have equivalent earning power as their male counterparts?
So, while I accept I will never draw millions of dollars for my fastball or a perfect spiraling football, I will continue to cheer on those who do and be thrilled with their victory and fume at their defeat. After all, I love sports as so many other women do and considering the buying power of women, our male athletes should be celebrating that or their paychecks might be much less. Perhaps there is some equalization going on after all.