"Thank God for men": Why do athletes get paid less
Women's sporting success in the world is obvious, but EQUALITY in sports, it often remains only an appearance, although, of course, the situation is improving. Sport is a very conservative sphere, where women are still either pointed to their "right" place ("What hockey? Better do rhythmic gymnastics"), or allowed to participate, but discriminated against by unequal opportunities or pay compared to men, inappropriate jokes and offensive comments. It comes to the fact that to practice some sports, women are forced to hide their gender and compete under male names. We understand why men's sports are encouraged more readily than women's sports, and whether women should compete separately from men.
Sexism in sport is not so obvious, because now no one forbids women to play sports professionally (not that almost a hundred years ago), to participate in competitions and Olympic games (in 2012, for example, 269 athletes came to the London Olympics less, for the first time at the Olympics, women's boxing was presented. These arguments allow many to believe that equality in sports has been achieved. However, to think so is to see only one side of the coin.
As the BBC study shows, women and men now receive equal pay in 83% of sports. Of course, this is more than half, and since 2014, when the previous survey was conducted, the figure has grown by 13%, whereas in 1973 men and women were not encouraged equally in any sport. And yet the difference in the salaries of sportsmen and sportswomen is still too big. So, the most highly paid men's football players get hundreds of thousands of pounds a week; At the same time, Stephanie Houghton, the star of the women's Arsenal, the highest paid player, earns about 70 thousand pounds a year.
Monetary inequality can be observed in tennis, where, it would seem, women are better off than in any other sport. But while Roger Federer wins $ 731,000 in singles at the Western & Southern Open, Serena Williams (who was in the lead for Grand Slam 21 times, which men won in tennis) received only 495,000 for winning the same fight among women. Different prize funds are often explained by the different popularity of men's and women's competitions - for example, Novak Djokovic, one of the best tennis players in the world, resisted on the statistics of visits. But today at major tournaments, the organizers distribute the award among the participants of different genders equally. That does not negate gender scandals: last year it was unleashed by Raymond Moore, tournament director at Indian Wells, who said that tennis players "decide nothing", "live at the expense of men" and should be glad that they enjoy some of the privileges gained, while exactly how men "promote sport". “At the site of WTA tennis players, I would thank God for Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal on my knees every night,” added Moore (who lost his post at the end of the discussion), however, Federer himself spoke in this dispute on the side of women's tennis.
Women "have seized" big sport relatively recently, and the society still continues to restrict their access, indicating that they have no place
Sometimes, male athletes straightforwardly spend more than female athletes. The International Cricket Board, for example, paid for the flight of men to the Twenty20 Cricket World Cup in business class, while women in the economy were redeemed for women from the same team. The prize funds for this tournament for men and women were also unequal: in the first case, the winners were paid 5.6 million dollars, and in the second - only 400 thousand.
Such situations always end in loud scandals, but the topic has not yet been closed. The problem is that what happens in the professional arena largely determines behavior patterns in amateur sports, that is, it broadcasts the same stereotypes. It is not surprising that inequality plots periodically unfold, for example, during amateur races. In 2016, within the framework of the Kharkiv International Marathon, the declared prize for women-winners at a distance of 42.2 kilometers was two times less than the award for men - those were intended 10 thousand hryvnia (almost 22 thousand rubles). The organizers of the event found their explanation for this: not only did the results for this race last year were low, few women participated in it (15 vs. 182 men).
Under the pressure of public indignation, the marathon organizers nevertheless leveled the women's prize fund with the men's one, and some male eyewitnesses to the scandal admitted that they do not understand why women's participation in the marathon should be paid worse.
The experience of the world's largest marathons, however, shows that awarding men and women equally (regardless of the number of participants) is at least rational. Long-distance running allows you to not only test yourself, but also earn. The Boston Marathon, for example, pays participants of any gender 150 thousand dollars for the first place, 75 thousand for the second and 40 thousand for the third. Of course, over the years, winning the Boston Marathon is becoming increasingly difficult, because the regulations are constantly decreasing, and the cost of the registration fee remains very high. Nevertheless, the fact that everyone can take part in the race naturally increased the involvement of women. Needless to say, they completely managed to win the position and show that amateur running can be practiced from a variety of reasons: to conquer new heights, keep yourself in shape, for pleasure or charity, and for a thousand more reasons. And these reasons are equally significant for both women and men.
Of course, some sports are actually less in demand among women than among men. But the problem here is a double-edged sword: on the one hand, women have “grasped” big sport relatively recently and the society still continues to restrict their access, indicating that there is no place for them. On the other hand, women are still under pressure from the idea of truly "female" and truly "male" sports; in Russia, this division is preserved to a greater degree, but in other countries of the world it has not disappeared anywhere. Such a division is not just unfair, but also harmful, because in sports, as in business, competition is necessary to avoid stagnation. And while children are told that ballet is better suited to girls than boxing, and boys are forced to choose martial arts instead of ballroom dancing, the sport loses, perhaps, more motivated, more enthusiastic, more talented participants.
Typical ideas that women should not or should not engage in "male" sports are even today so strong that they force women to give up their interests: they are convinced that they will become "less feminine" or "less beautiful" because of bruises and injuries. Traditions are extremely stable, and to break the habitual way of life means to lead life into chaos, which many fear. This vicious circle leads to the fact that women's sport falls into isolation: it has fewer participants and spectators, less money is invested in it, which means that it develops worse than men's.
In England, women could not professionally play football for fifty years - the rest of the world in matters of football, of course, was equal to England
Most of all today goes to women's football, especially in Russia. The main problem is that almost nobody knows about him. Salaries of women remain miserable compared with the fees of Russian football players. And things are bad even for the women's national team, not to mention the small club teams. Sponsors do not seek to invest in women's football, to popularize it, because the idea of its secondary nature is widespread, and the sport itself seems to be something incomprehensible and frivolous. The existing stereotype also captures the audience: the less they talk about women's football, the less they watch it.
“Football in Russia, and all over the world, is considered a male sport,” says Vladimir Dolgiy-Rapoport, founder of the women's amateur team GirlPower. “But there was a funny thing about football: in England (where sport originated and developed), it was equally played and men and women. When World War I began and the men went to the front, the women stayed and continued to play football. At the same time, they began to assemble real, large stadiums. When the men returned, it turned out that no one needs men's football anymore, since female games but they became much more popular. They decided to fight it and soon found a simple solution: they banned professional women's football, saying that this is a “rough game" and women cannot behave this way. As a result, in England women could not play football professionally for fifty years, and so women's football was killed.The rest of the world, which in matters of football, of course, was equal to England, took over this structure: if women do not play football, then we will not. Therefore, women's football is considered something conditional. "
In Europe and the United States, women's football seems to be a little more fortunate, although here too there was a place for stereotypes, as evidenced by the difference in the salaries of male and female players. In a recent interview with Nadia Karpov, the star of women's football, now playing for Valencia, she noticed that she decided to leave the country when she saw how many fans this sport gathers abroad, while "in Russia you are steadily ". It is quite symptomatic that a promising athlete chose cooperation with a foreign club, although less profitable, fearing to “wither away at the Russian championship.” The point is not only in money, but also in the prospects that are not worthwhile for women's football in Russia.
And yet Alla Filina, the coach and co-founder of GirlPower, believes that women's football is beginning to gain deserved popularity, "the speed of the game is growing, the technique in girls is incredible, and they have long since been no longer trained by the residual principle. (when not the strongest coaches give women's teams instead of men's, "that it was not insulting. "- Approx. Ed.). Very soon we will see how women's football will become, if not as popular as men's, but much more popular than other team sports (men's including). And the money will come there. This is a long, thorny path, there is other money there, but they will be there sooner or later. "Large companies have already started to invest in this sport, although so far this is only one case: recently adidas prepared a special form for GirlPower football players. For such club teams This is a great rarity, and only the women's team of the country had a special uniform, and usually football players have to wear men's sets.
The good news, perhaps, is that women are increasingly being taken seriously and are allowed to compete with men. Thus, the International Olympic Committee introduced several new mixed disciplines in the program of the 2020 Winter Olympics. This is done in order to get rid of gender preponderance, increase the proportion of women in the competition and bring the number of athletes and athletes to a ratio of 50 to 50. Some of these disciplines suggest that women can not only compete with an athlete from another team, but also with a male rival. It can be assumed that someone will take this initiative in hostility, but in reality, in some sports, restrictions on gender do not have any basis.
Photo:Valeriy Lebedev - stock.adobe.com, WavebreakMediaMicro - stock.adobe.com, Scvos -stock.adobe.com
