Should Male and Female Athletes Get Paid Equally?

In this episode, David discusses the pay differences between male and female athletes, focusing specifically on the game of soccer. Currently, men and women,  ostensibly playing the same game,  are paid very differently. Should this be equalized? If so, why, or why not?

Contents:
- team sports are gendered, meaning that on a professional level, men never play with women.
- similarities to other careers where men earn differently from women
- arguments against pay differences
- arguments for pay differences
- salaries vs. contracts
- a possible way forward

My email address:
david.tonner2010@gmail.com

Links:

Gender pay gap in sports:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender_pay_gap_in_sports

Gender pay gap:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender_pay_gap

Analysis: What equal pay in sports really means, as the fight goes on for U.S. women's soccer:
https://www.espn.com/espnw/story/_/id/28971949/analysis-equal-pay-sports-really-means-fight-goes-us-women-soccer

Transcript

Should Male and Female Athletes Get Paid Equally?

Welcome to the Reasoned Intuitions podcast. My name is David Tonner, and I discuss personal ideas on moral issues in modern society and try to come up with improved ways of thinking and behaving, in the hopes of becoming a better person and causing the least amount of harm. As a disclaimer, I'd like to state that I am not an expert in either philosophy, psychology, or anything else, for that matter.

My opinions and positions are provisional and open to change with new information or an improved understanding of the issues I discuss. My intent is not to provide definitive rules or to tell anyone how they should live their life. I merely want to share my ideas and insights, in the hopes that they can be inspirational or in some way helpful.

I employ pragmatic ethics and try to reason from as broad and objective a perspective as possible. Some of my basic assumptions are that unchosen suffering is bad, and we should strive to minimize it. Joy is the most pleasurable sensation, and thus we should strive to maximize it. Empathy is universal, with some exceptions, and it should be the starting point of any good ethical system. 

If you would like to support my podcast, the best way to do that is by either giving it a rating or reviewing it, and you can do that on Spotify, Google Podcasts, or Apple Podcasts.

Introduction

Hello and welcome to another episode of Reasoned Intuitions. I'm your host, David Tonner, and today I want to talk about equal pay for male and female athletes. I'm specifically going to focus on the game of soccer, because it was this particular game that got me thinking of the topic. I happened to be in Portugal when the idea popped into my head, and as you may know, the Portuguese are lightly obsessed with soccer, or futebol, as they call it. I'd like to mention at the outset that I don't feel the same level of confidence about this topic as I do about many others, and I'm open to being corrected in my assumptions and conclusions. Here are my thoughts for the time being:

 

Soccer

The first thing you might notice about soccer, as with all other professional team sports, is that it is played either by male or female teams, but never a mix. The reason for this, I dare say, is obvious, though nowadays, it's a point that many people object to: men and women are built differently, both physically and mentally, but the physical part is the one that is more relevant in this context. Men are almost universally stronger than women, which is simply an aspect of sexual dimorphism, nothing more, meaning that males and females of many species of animals have different physical characteristics, and usually, males are bigger than females, especially among mammals.

In sports, the question isn't about skill level, but rather the physical advantages conferred by larger muscles and a different anatomical composition that predisposes men to perform greater feats of strength and endurance than women. Naturally, this gives even amateur male athletes significant advantages over professional female athletes and in a mixed game of male and female players, even lower-skilled male players would dominate over proficient female players, and this is why we separate the sexes in most athletic events. I'm going to avoid the morass of gender differences at this time and simply assume that these points are understood and accepted by most of my listeners.

For clarification, please note that I use the terms sex and gender interchangeably in this episode.

Gendered sports

 Now to my knowledge, the fact of separate-gender athletic teams is not an issue, unless we start discussing trans athletes, but I won't do that here. I don't think many people object to the fact that men play against men and women play against their own. What leads to acrimony and discontentment, and now more than ever, activism and pushback, is the fact that in just about any sport or athletic discipline, women get paid less than men; female soccer players earn a fraction of the amount that male soccer players bring it. I don't have specific numbers in front of me, nor is that a very interesting area for me to explore, but I will point out that sports salaries are not standardized. In fact, it's more accurate to call the money soccer players earn a contract rather than a salary, and each contract is negotiated individually. Still, this doesn’t change the fact that the contracts offered to female soccer players are puny compared to those at the disposal of male players. 

Other careers

There is a corollary to this discussion in many other types of careers, where male and female salaries differ to a great degree, based on gender, and this is a topic that has gained much prominence in the last few years. What is often misunderstood or misrepresented in the simplistic way that the subject is talked about, is not that men and women doing the exact same job in the same workplace go home with a different paycheck. Rather, the disparity lies between the types of work men and women do, or should I say, the types of careers dominated by men versus positions more often filled by women. They each have a different earning potential and they are each offered different contracts in specialized fields, such as managerial jobs, and this is comparable to the soccer example. If men and women played on a mixed soccer team, it seems reasonable to think that they would earn the equivalent amount. However, since that is not the case, the discrepancy is allowed to exist. Why might that be? And is it right or wrong? Let's first look at some arguments against pay differences.

Arguments against pay differences

 First, the uneven pay grades that currently exist in athletic disciplines automatically disadvantage women from the time they choose sport as their career. Due to their sex, they are never able to level up and reach income parity with men; this seems unfair, of course. After all, men and women are equal. This is a value that Western societies hold quite strongly these days, and rightfully so! Shouldn't they therefore be treated equally in sports, too?

 Second, there is an argument to be made for rebalancing the various ways in which women have traditionally been disadvantaged, disenfranchised, and discriminated against—I hope you appreciate the alliteration I snuck in—there is a call for redress, or reparations, in a sense, for this type of historical negligence and oppression, and the debate naturally crosses over into the realm of sports, which appears to be an area of human activity where not much improvement in terms of equality has taken place over time.

Third, we have been historically conditioned to value men's athletic prowess more than women's. This is especially true in the world of sports, and it seems pretty universal. To a great degree, then, the reason male sporting events are more popular is not because they are objectively better or more exciting, but rather because most of us grow up believing that female athletes, except for a few disciplines such as softball, gymnastics, or figure skating, are less professional, less skilled, and just overall less fun.

Arguments for pay differences

Okay. What about arguments in support of maintaining these pay differences?

First of all, and perhaps simplistically, I would say that male soccer and female soccer are two different games. Think of it this way: male basketball players get paid differently from male baseball players, and hardly anyone is clamoring for an equalization of salaries between the two sports. By the same token, though the sports of male and female soccer are, in most ways, the same activity, there are qualitative differences that dictate to a large extent that their salaries must differ. Allow me to explain:

 To the best of my understanding, the rules of male and female soccer are identical, as is the equipment and the size of the playing field. This is probably the case with most other gendered sports, but even if they aren't exactly identical, the basis of the sports is the same. However, rules and gameplay are two different things, and therefore the outcome, or the experience for the viewer or sports fan is qualitatively very different. Apart from the physical differences between men and women that I mentioned earlier, other differences include aggression levels, women being far less aggressive in general, but also as players, than men. Some studies suggest that women are more technical in the way they play soccer, while men tend to adopt a more individual and less collaborative style. The pace of the games is different, strategies are different, showmanship is probably greater among men, and degrees of flopping, or the faking of injuries, commonly seen in male soccer, is much less prevalent among women players.

All this adds up, as I mentioned earlier, to a different overall viewing experience. For many reasons, including culturally and historically determined preferences, the composition of overall team sport viewership and the types of athletic performance they prefer skews towards males, and this translates to higher profits for male-driven sports in terms of ticket sales, concession sales, sponsorships, etc.

Second, I mentioned fairness earlier, so this will be a response to the argument in support of pay equalization. Fairness is a sticky topic and ironically, I'll avoid getting too philosophical about it here—yes, you guessed it: I'll save it for another episode—but it's worth briefly considering the argument that men and women are equal or have equal value.

 On an objective level. I find this to be rather meaningless—but don't tell anyone I said that. The question of value, whether equal or not, is consequentially only relevant within specific contexts. It is certainly ethically appropriate to grant men and women equal rights overall, no quibbles there. Where this argument breaks down for me, however, is the idea that since we all have equal worth and should, in most ways, be treated equally, we ought to also receive the same returns. This not-so-subtle distinction is nowadays referred to as equality versus equity, and the difference between the two is essentially the difference between opportunity and outcome.

Now, I must tread carefully and not contradict myself: in general, I support a push for equal opportunity, but I am averse to the increasing pressure in liberal society to generate, often artificially, equal outcomes among men and women, blacks and whites, etc. If you recall, though, I said earlier that men and women start off with different degrees of opportunity in sports, so if I support equality, should I not want to level the playing field—pun intended—of these opportunities? Is there even a way to do that? At this point in time, it seems to me that the immutable natural differences between men and women simply do not allow us to even out the circumstances that different genders start out with when it comes to sports, so it doesn't seem possible, and we may just need to accept it for the time being. 

So what am I saying? No equality and also no equity? I'm afraid I can't support either in this case: one seems physically impossible, and the other appears unrealistic, based on all the arguments against it. After all, in a push for equity between men and women, should we not also push for equity between netball and basketball players? I mean, the two sports operate on very similar principles, so should we not want both groups of athletes to be paid equally? What about minor league athletes getting paid the same as major league players? Since humans all have equal worth, why should there be a difference in pay grade between the two, merely because they differ in age, skill, and experience level? 

Here's an analogy from a different industry. Pardon me if it seems facile, but it helps illustrate the way that inherent differences sometimes disadvantage either one or the other sex, but this doesn't have to be, in and of itself, an ethical problem. There are careers or crafts that by their very nature cannot be performed equally by both genders. Take blacksmiths, for example. A female blacksmith would naturally be disadvantaged from birth compared to her male counterpart, in terms of the type of assignments she could take on, the quality of her work in specific regards, as well as the speed with which she completed jobs. Is this wrong and unfair, or is it simply the nature of sex differences and the profession itself, wherein an attempt to equalize outcomes would in turn create a separate ethical dilemma? I'm not sure how this can be balanced out, but it strikes me that some situations appear unfair when appraised superficially, but upon closer scrutiny are found to not be unfair in an objective sense.

What I'm not saying

I want to be clear about what I'm not saying, however. As stated earlier, in general, I support equal opportunity for everybody in every area of life. In the context of soccer, what that looks like to me is giving girls just as many opportunities to compete in the sport on a professional level as boys get. No obstacles should be placed in their way that do not arise for boys, and they should have equal access to the upper echelons of the sport, just like boys do. This includes governments funding female sports to the same degree that they support male sports, from schools and minor leagues all the way up to professional teams. To me, that seems fair, all things considered, because it assures that the resources put in place that make the game accessible and attractive to both boys and girls and that allow both sexes to thrive in the sport, are equivalent.

Salaries vs contracts

Going back to something I said earlier, there is a crucial point that I feel needs to be stressed: the fact that in numerous sports—and I’ll add the disclaimer here that I don't know very much about pay structures in most athletic disciplines—players getting paid based on individual contracts rather than salaries is a huge factor, at least for me, in determining where I stand on this question. If it was the case that all soccer players were paid the same salary—or let's even say that there were separate pay grades for different positions in a team, which would at least lend itself to the call for equality between male and female goalies, forwards, strikers, etc.—if it was the case that sport remuneration was salary-based, then I would have no objection to its equalization between men and women since, in that scenario, pay would be standardized based on the type of work performed. However, that is not the case. Individual contracts are offered to different players and sometimes the sums are significantly different from each other. This is dependent largely on profits, or what each player is deemed to be worth to the club, based on his or her popularity with fans and sponsors. If we somehow follow to its conclusion the argument that female players should still receive the same contract as their male counterparts, then we would be required to fundamentally change the way sports audiences approach gendered disciplines altogether, because we would also have to equalize the profits that male and female players bring in, and this is determined by ticket sales, and by extension, corporate sponsorships and advertising revenue. This type of engineered social overhaul strikes me as a monumental enterprise, and if other non-coercive attempts to convince people that their preferences or lifestyles are ethically problematic, such as the push for vegetarianism or climate change awareness, are anything to go by, then apart from looking at a significantly protracted timeline, the prospect of achieving effective and lasting change seems slim to me.

A possible way forward

Before closing, I'd like to reassure my audience that despite everything I've said so far, I am not in fact advocating for keeping the status quo. So, with that in mind, I'd like to propose a way forward that is both aligned with the points I've made in this podcast, in terms of the differences between male and female sports and what determines their popularity and revenues, and one that also provides hope for a future where the stakes are much more even and where the issue of inequality is less prominent and frustrating to the underdogs. While I've said throughout this episode that the current reality of the situation may just need to be accepted for the time being, I do think it's important to apply steady pressure in the direction of balancing the scales in all the areas where this is possible, starting from opportunities for girls, increased funding for women's sports, equalizing media exposure, and also changing social perspectives with respect to the appeal of female sports.

I don't think that at this point in time, we should legislate equal pay, but my hope is that with all these efforts combined, even if women's sports never reach the popularity level of men's, we can gradually get to a place where the imbalance between the female and male experience in athletic disciplines is reduced to a scale where it stops being a moral issue.

Closing

As I mentioned at the beginning of the episode, I am open to feedback on this and all other topics, and I encourage my listeners to share their views with me. In case you're wondering how you can do that, the best way is through social media, as my podcast has its own page on Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube. You can also email me if you prefer to keep your comments private, and I'll post my email address in the show notes. Thank you again for listening, and I look forward to hearing from you.