A Gross Disparity in Pay

Buckle up, friends and foes, this is going to be a long one.

Today we’re going to be discussing something near to my heart: women’s sports. This is just the first piece in a series of how women in sports are treated. This specific article will be about the wage gap.

Yes, my friends, you’re about to get a raging feminist rant.

Let’s start with some startling facts. From BusinessInsider, “members of the women's [soccer] team received a $75,000 bonus for winning the 2015 Women's World Cup. If the men were to ever win a World Cup, their bonus under the current structure would be more than four times larger at nearly $400,000.”

Holy fish sticks, Batman, that is a huge gap! But wait! That’s not the end of it.

Related: The American Bar Association discusses the wage gap in sports.

The same scandalous pay gap happens in tennis too. Take a look at Serena Williams, easily the No. 1 tennis player in the world. She is the only tennis player to ever get a golden career grand slam in singles and doubles. She boasts 23 Grand Slam titles.

To say that Williams is the best of the best is an understatement. She is the best.

For the men, the top tennis player currently is Novak Djokovic who has 15 Grand Slam titles.

The two are separated by eight titles, but what about the money?

According to Forbes, Djokovic makes $1.5 million in winnings and $22 million in endorsements. Williams makes $8 million in winnings and $19 million in endorsements.

So not much of a difference in money but let’s look at another contender: Roger Federer.

Federer, who ranks fifth in ESPN’s Tennis ATP Rankings, makes $12.2 million in winnings and $65 million in endorsements.

Now hold up. The man in fifth place makes the most money of all of them? How does that make any sense?

This is common practice, people. And as much as it breaks my heart, it happens in hockey too.

Let’s look at the gross disparity in the salaries of players in the NWHL and the NHL.

The National Women’s Hockey League, or NWHL, was established in 2015 and could barely afford to pay their players. In its inaugural year, the organization paid their players between $10,000 - $26,000.

However, recent budget cuts slashed that amount in half, and now the players will only be making between $2,000 - $10,000.

Even the tippy-top $10,000 salary is barely more than a part-time employee’s yearly wages.

Check the numbers: the federal minimum wage is $7.25 an hour. While the definition of “full-time” can vary between businesses, full-time is typically anywhere between 32 - 40 hours per week. So part-time would be anything less than 32 hours.

For my calculations, I used a 24-hour work week.

Taking the minimum wage ($7.25) multiplied by 24 hours gives you $174 a week. Multiply that number by 52 weeks in a year, the average yearly income for part-timers is around $9,048.

So the highest paid female hockey players barely make more than someone working a part-time job at the local slop shop.

These are women who are just as athletic as the men by the way.

In the 2019 All Star Game, two-time Olympian Kendall Coyne became the first woman ever to participate in the skills competition.

She placed seventh in the fastest skate competition beating out Arizona Coyote’s Clayton Keller.

Coyne skated the course in 14.346 seconds and the guys were convinced she actually won including the winner of the competition Connor McDavid:

“When she took off, I thought she might have won, the way she was moving,” McDavid said [hyperlink to USA TODAY article].

McDavid skated the course in 13.02 seconds.

Obviously this McDavid character is pretty speedy, but is he any good? Well, yes. He’s pretty damn good. The NHL actually ranks him as the No. 1 player, even ahead of greats such as Sidney Crosby or Alexander Ovechkin.

So, yeah, he’s going to make a pretty penny, but would you expect the 22-year old to be making $19 million?

You read that right. $19 million. McDavid is currently the highest paid player according to Forbes, and he makes an additional $4 million in endorsements.

So the best NWHL player is lucky to make $10,000 and the best NHL player makes $19 million.

But McDavid is the cream of the crop. Is it really fair to compare the two? Even looking at the lowest paid NHLer, there’s a gross disparity.

The lowest paid player, Jack Campbell of the LA Kings, makes $650,000.

So the top player in the NWHL makes less than 1% of the salary of the lowest paid player in the NHL.

How to account for these massive differences in salaries? We have to look at how women in sports are perceived. So get ready for part 2 of this raging feminist rant, guys, gals, and non-binary pals. You’ve got a storm coming.