Dr. Jen Coburn | Guest Contributor
“Pay Us What You Owe Us” is not just a slogan created by WNBA players in their quest for pay parity in women’s professional sports, but is reflective of a sentiment echoed by women throughout all facets of the sporting industry.
Whether you are a player or coach, front office administrator or sideline journalist, the issues facing Women in sports often revolve around the construction of worth and are not just measured in the form of the almighty dollar.
Over Spring Break, I attended two back-to-back conferences in Dublin, Ireland, where I presented academic papers on both NIL and the discrimination athletes face on social media. At both the Sport and Discrimination Conference and the IACS Summit, there was no shortage of presentations and discussions regarding the reality that confronts women at all levels of sport.
As a life-long athlete, I often wish that our beliefs around the purity of sport, that it can somehow escape the ills of society and teach us how to come together in competition, hold true. But I also know that sports cannot escape the culture and society in which it is played, and each panelist presented clear and convincing evidence to that end.
Whether it’s the type of questions asked to professional women footballers in Spain and England (usually relational rather than tactical), fan comments on rugby commentators in Ireland (“what would she know about it anyway?”) or that female college athletes in the US face an overall higher rate of sexual violence than their male counterparts, the playing field is not equal and is riddled with the very same ‘isms’ found within our society and culture.
A pay gap in society translates to a pay gap in sports. Harmful stereotypes that usurp credibility in society translate to sports. Violence and abuse in society translate to sports.
We often hear that acknowledgment is the first step in dealing with a problem, so perhaps the WNBA’s slogan can be a step in acknowledging that the construction of worth looks differently for women in sports.