Should Female Athletes Be Paid the Same as Male Athletes?

SHOULD FEMALE ATHLETES BE PAID THE SAME AS THE MALE ATHLETES

• It is an on-going debate for decades whether female athletes should be paid the same as men athletes. The question brings up a lot
of heat, glares, and emotions.
• In the past, a male tennis player named Novak Djokovic has claimed that male tennis players should be paid more as those
matches acquire way more viewers and audiences than women’s matches do (Bower, Hums & Grappendorf, 2015).
• It was right after Serena Williams publically made a statement about this issue and criticized the ‘Indian Wells’ Director for the
uneven pay. According to Djokovic, women wanted to participate in sports like men and they fought their way in it. But this is all they
deserve and they have got it.
• Now they cannot claim for more prize money. Rather he pointed out that men athletes should fight for higher prize money as they
bring in the most viewers (Spaaij, Farquharson & Marjoribanks, 2015).
• He also stated that men’s body does not go through so many changes as women’s body does, specifically in his words ‘the
hormones and different stuff’. Clearly, this was a sexist comment and it raised a lot of public outrage due to which he had to apologise
publically and retract his statement.

• The soccer team Matildas was the next in line in this argument. It is the Australian women’s soccer team.
• They also raised the same question and protested by skipping a game tour. It stirred up a lot of heat in the sports industry.
• Afterward, Cricket Australia announced good news as they declared a new pay deal for women cricketers. The top players in
the female cricket team will be the highest-paid athletes in team sports in the country (O'Connor et al., 2017).
• Due to the new deal, the players will be earning more than 100,000 AUD per annum.
• Even after this, another thing was pointed out that a bunch of male cricketers from Australia who are in the highest ranks is
paid almost 2 million AUD in a season.