Essay About Gender Inequality/Equality In Sports

[greystar403]

My English class is writing essays based on real world issues. I chose to do an essay about gender equality in sports because I see the topic of different prize money values to men and women in tennis all the time in these forums.

I know this might be an issue only found in tennis, but I would like to find out if there is any inequality in other sports as well. Things that can be equal/unequal pay, endorsements, media exposure, and performance based issues.

As of right now, this might be a big controversial issue so I am not choosing a side yet (women should compete equally as men OR women need special conditions in order to compete alongside men). I would like to see how much information I get before I choose a side.

I would like to use credible sources I can take quotes from. Interviews and press conferences would be nice too. This doesn't have to be just TENNIS. ANY sport is welcome to put their input here.

Thanks!

[PCXL-Fan]

Hey listen, both male and female pro Tennis are relatively poor sports compared with most big sports because way fewer people watch it compared to soccer, football, baseball etc. Only about 100 men & 100 women can earn a living in tennis off prize money. Most businesses don't do huge sponsorship for male and female pro tennis because its not great business, the return on investment isn't good enough to pay huge amount in tennis.


Female sports outside of tennis have the same problem.
Where will the money come from?

Female pro sports:
audience is smaller
ticket sales aren't enough
sponsorship from companies is too low because audience is much smaller
tv time screen time is smaller because audience is smaller
Limited prime time tv slots. Womens leagues will need to be able to muscle out half male league sports to get half the primetime tv viewership.


This is not about sexism in my eyes. Female supermodels earn immensely more than male supermodels. Is there rampant sexism towards males in the fashion industry?.... no.

[PCXL-Fan]

A large portion of males in northamerican, european, southamerican, and asian cultures divert a good deal of their past time to watching male league sports. A significant number of males divert a good portion of their income to sport of their interest.

What incentive will there be to attact large portions of females to watching female sports, and diverting males to switch half of their viewing time and dollars to watching female pro sports?

[greystar403]

Allow me to be specific with the sides I have to choose from. There is in fact gender equality in sports.

Should there be inequality? Or no?

[PCXL-Fan]

In the end its about money. As we all know it doesn't grow on trees. Where will the money come from?

[Jay_The_Nomad]

One piece of advice: if you're going to tackle such a controversial topic, make sure you do your research thoroughly. If you're a little short on your research, you are almost guaranteed to get hammered by the marker regardless whether it's a male or female marker.

[Fearsome Forehand]

Men's tennis subsidizes women's tennis. The market is being sidetracked in pro tennis.

In the rest of the pro sports, the market rules and earnings are commensurate with the total gate (including TV broadcast rights.)

[adventure]

Gender equality in sports is oxymoronic.

A 4.5/5 male tennis club hacker destroys serena williams.

Originally Posted by greystar403

My English class is writing essays based on real world issues. I chose to do an essay about gender equality in sports because I see the topic of different prize money values to men and women in tennis all the time in these forums.

I know this might be an issue only found in tennis, but I would like to find out if there is any inequality in other sports as well. Things that can be equal/unequal pay, endorsements, media exposure, and performance based issues.

As of right now, this might be a big controversial issue so I am not choosing a side yet (women should compete equally as men OR women need special conditions in order to compete alongside men). I would like to see how much information I get before I choose a side.

I would like to use credible sources I can take quotes from. Interviews and press conferences would be nice too. This doesn't have to be just TENNIS. ANY sport is welcome to put their input here.

Thanks!

[adventure]

Originally Posted by greystar403

Allow me to be specific with the sides I have to choose from. There is in fact gender equality in sports.

Should there be inequality? Or no?

Man, you must be smokin' the good stuff. I repeat, THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS GENDER EQUALITY IN SPORTS.

You can't be this dense.

[mikeespinmusic]

If you're not a Big name in the tennis field. Money is tough to come by. The pay structure should be equal and even more so given for the lower ranked players. And going back to the gender equality thing, the women should be paid the same. They attract girls and young and old women into the sport. They're ambassadors for the game. If every woman in the world decided to not to play, the whole tennis industry would shrink dramatically - The economy in this field would be ruined.

Best example is one of those muslim countries where only the men can play sport. It shouldn't be a surpise that they're not a sporting nation. There's virtually no consumer demand from women what so ever. And surprise surprise virtually no economy.

[Fearsome Forehand]

Pro tennis is pay for performance. If one wins, one is rewarded, if one loses, not so much.

The ATP carries far too many players. The top 10 or 20 guys could have their own tour and make a lot more money.

The ATP carries the WTA especially at the majors and shared events. The ATP should push for separate events.

Pro sports is not a socialist experiment. You don't get a trophy and a big check just for showing up.

[El Diablo]

Somebody mentioned above that the audience for a women's sport is smaller than for the men in the same sport. Not entirely true. A study by one of the news wire services found that after football, perhaps the most watched sport in America is actually women's figure skating (you can find it on TV almost every Sunday in the winter), which has a much larger audience than men's figure skating.

[krz]

Originally Posted by El Diablo

Somebody mentioned above that the audience for a women's sport is smaller than for the men in the same sport. Not entirely true. A study by one of the news wire services found that after football, perhaps the most watched sport in America is actually women's figure skating (you can find it on TV almost every Sunday in the winter), which has a much larger audience than men's figure skating.

I don't believe figure skating is the 2nd most popular sports... not by a long shot.

http://www.sportsmediawatch.com/2012...f-2012-so-far/

It is not gender inequality, it's how the business world works. Your value is tied to the amount of revenue you generate. Why are men/women slams paying the same then? Probably because the backlash from such an unPC move as not giving equal pay would be more devastating to revenues than just shelling out the extra cash. And to be fair womens tennis at one point was generating more buzz in the US than mens.

It's not about playing the same amount of sets or doing the same amount of work, it's about how much money you bring in to your employer. Contrary to what is taught in school we don't care how hard you work, we care about results. There is no A for effort. Though more likely than not an A for effort will also get you an A for results

That is why female supermodels, figure skaters, porn stars(lol), waitresses/bartenders, even construction(though I can't figure out why on this one) make more than their male counter parts. But, you'll never hear complaints about that.

With that being said, don't confuse this with me implying that gender inequality in the work place does not exist.

[El Diablo]

^^ study was done by either UPI or AP, you can look it up. I think it was done 10 or 15 years ago. The data you cite support my point as all the top rated INDIVIDUAL events are NFL games, which was ahead of skating in total audience. The rest are INDIVIDUAL events, again most of them football which I noted was ahead of skating, (single game or day) that don't reflect the total ANNUAL viewership for that sport.

[krz]

Originally Posted by El Diablo

^^ study was done by either UPI or AP, you can look it up. I think it was done 10 or 15 years ago. The data you cite support my point as all the top rated INDIVIDUAL events are NFL games, which was ahead of skating in total audience. The rest are INDIVIDUAL events, again most of them football which I noted was ahead of skating, (single game or day) that don't reflect the total ANNUAL viewership for that sport.

I wasn't able to find the actual article just references to it. It was a survey by the National Sport Study published by the AP done in 1993! I hope you are not trying to imply that the study is actually still relevant. Figure skating is not even on the radar anymore.

http://www.therichest.org/sports/mos...ts-in-america/
http://www.sportsbusinessdaily.com/D...rris-Poll.aspx
http://www.harrisinteractive.com/New...t/Default.aspx

Dorothy Hamill, Peggy Fleming, and Scott Hamilton[86] were among the eight most popular athletes in the United States, out of over 800 athletes surveyed.[87] Dorothy Hamill was statistically tied with Mary Lou Retton as the most popular athlete in America. The Tonya Harding scandal in 1994 increased interest in figure skating.[88] The first night of the ladies' figure skating competition in the 1994 Winter Olympics achieved higher TV Nielsen ratings than that year's Super Bowl and was the most watched sports television program of all-time, to that date.

Individual event viewership is not exactly what I would call uncorrelated to annual viewership...

[El Diablo]

Figure skating is on network TV on Sundays throughout the winter, and sometimes other parts of the year as well. I think it is more relevant than the gargage studies you are citing -- the ones about frequency of website browsing usually tell us more about which sports are of gambling interest than what is being watched.

[PCXL-Fan]

For all the popular team sports (hockey, soccer, football, etc) each team is a separate business, an separate franchise. Some of the franchise may own a team in the female league but not all. But can these franchises afford to double millions they give to the players, by giving the female team the same amount as the male team? Lots of franchise teams in lots of sports would go bankrupt.

Whats the next answer? The male sport teams get pay cuts? Split half the player salary between the men and women teams? Well this would only be possible if the franchise owns a womens league team. If the franchise didn't own a female team would they give their millions of revinue to another business (franchise)?

What if every team franchise owner and every player in every sport agreed to take a 30-40% pay cut to give to female players, all except 1 stubborn team? That 1 team that would refuse would have the highest salaries for male players and thus attract the best male players who want the highest pay.

[krz]

Originally Posted by El Diablo

Figure skating is on network TV on Sundays throughout the winter, and sometimes other parts of the year as well. I think it is more relevant than the gargage studies you are citing -- the ones about frequency of website browsing usually tell us more about which sports are of gambling interest than what is being watched.

You know that the AP "study" was not based on viewership number right? It was based on a survey of individuals just like the harris pole was and just like the espn poll linked below. They are not based on website hits like you're suggesting.

Find me one... just one recent survey or viewership stats that shows figure skating as the 2nd most popular sport.

http://www.sportsbusinessdaily.com/D...tor-Sport.aspx

http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/sport...-skating_N.htm <- USA Today article talking about the fall of figure skating

http://tvbythenumbers.zap2it.com/201...s-down/166926/
^Figure skating on NBC beat out on Fox by UFC of all things, UFC! And this was the National Championships last week.

http://sports.espn.go.com/oly/figure...ory?id=3212691

Honestly, you are either delusional or just arguing for the sake of arguing if you think figure skating is still the 2nd most popular sport in the US by viewership or by popularity.

I mean jeez, even people on a figure skating forum aren't this delusional. http://www.goldenskate.com/forum/sho...larity-Decline

But, hey it's on network tv it must be popular. Fact is more more than couple golf events and even horse racing made it into the to 50 this year. Figure skating? None. Not even it's most popular event. You really think annual viewership is above that of MLB, NBA, NCAAB, and NCAAF, NASCAR when they can't get one of their events to make the top 50 most viewed of the year list? Unless of course you believe annual viewership isn't correlated to event viewership at all lol.

[greystar403]

Originally Posted by adventure

Man, you must be smokin' the good stuff. I repeat, THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS GENDER EQUALITY IN SPORTS.

You can't be this dense.

Dang it. Yeah I must be smoking something. LOL

I mean't there is INequality. And my question was should there be equality?

[PCXL-Fan]

Originally Posted by greystar403

Dang it. Yeah I must be smoking something. LOL

I mean't there is INequality. And my question was should there be equality?

Of course there is inequality.

BUT HOW do you propose we create financial equality across all sports?

Can you respond?

I showed you a glimpse of how complex resource ownership is and the huge hurdles female team sports must climb to achieve near financial equality. How do we entice tens of millions of american women & men to make womens league sports a big hobby and pasttime.