I was looking at the Forbes list of highest paid athletes in the world and guess what I noticed? No, not the fact that I am never going to have a fraction of what any of these people have, that fact will never change. I’ll remain sad about it forever. I noticed something else, something more important than my personal wealth. The gigantic pay gap exists here as well. Way more gigantic than in other industries.
You certainly know how this is a hot topic all over the world, and rightly so. It makes no sense that a man should get more money than a woman when they are doing the same thing. He should get more money if he works better, anyone should. Yet this is not the case. The case is that more often than not, women get far less money than men do for the same level of performance at the same job.
Now that’s just not right. There’s no need to discuss this, it stands to reason that it should not be like that. Yet it is. Especially in sports. The same list I mentioned at the beginning has one woman. Not two, or three, or maybe even half of that number. There’s just one. It’s Serena Williams and she’s not at the top like Oprah is on her list, but 51st. Wow. The only woman on a list of 100 men and she’s dead in the middle.
I know that one article won’t make a difference, but it will get some people thinking. And thinking is the first thing we need here. Thinking will get us to act, and too few are doing that when it comes to the pay gap in sports, and in general.
Billions of us love sports, and probably as much as half of those billions are women (yes, just because it’s a common view that men play and enjoy sports more than women, it doesn’t mean it’s true). It’s not a “man’s world”. It’s a human world, and it should be equal for everyone, everywhere.