Enoch Chang
Mr. Subkhan
English 298
5/27/24
The Inequalities Female Athletes Face
The experience female and male athletes face in sports is completely different. When talking about the difference between male and female sports today, people often describe the injustices female athletes face compared to male athletes. The range of this problem doesn’t stem from just female sports, but also from youth sports. Many people assume the different experience female athletes face is because of the biological and physical difference between female and male and also the difference in work ethic, but instead, the problem lies in the underrepresentation of women in professional sports. Through my personal observations and research, I observed several injustices of female athletes as seen through the disparity in pay, funding, and support in various sports such as soccer and tennis.
To start, female athletes face the injustice of disparity in pay between male and female athletes in their respective sports. A prominent example of this is the USA female soccer team, where several athletes have spoken up about the difference in pay between the male and female soccer team even though they have won more games than them, including the world cup final.
Because of these reasons, many of the players have labeled this injustice as “institutionalized gender discrimination,” as not only do they receive less pay than men, but their facilities are worse. Female soccer players receive worse facilities, medical care, staff, and coaching, showing how female sports are not as well supported as male sports. While these injustices in pay and funding may seem limited to just women’s soccer, they are also evident in women’s tennis. During the Italian Open, the prize money for the men’s tennis competition was 8.4 million dollars compared to the prize money of the women’s competition of 3.9 million dollars. Through this example, it shows that male tennis players are supported more financially than women’s tennis players. If more funding and support is given to female sports, it would encourage many more female athletes to continue sports and start sports at a young age. Through the disparities between women's tennis and soccer and men’s tennis and soccer, the examples prove the disparities in support, pay, and funding in female sports compared to male sports.
Works Cited
Mervosh, Sarah, and Christina Caron. “8 Times Women in Sports Fought for Equality.” The New York Times, The New York Times, 8 Mar. 2019, www.nytimes.com/2019/03/08/sports/women-sports-equality.html.
Gross, Terry. “Soccer Star Megan Rapinoe on Equal Pay, and What the U.S. Flag Means to Her.” NPR, NPR, 9 Nov. 2020, www.npr.org/2020/11/09/933018609/soccer-star-megan-rapinoe-on-equal-pay-and-what-the-u-s-flag-means-to-her.
Akabas, Lev. “U.S. Open’s Equal Pay Can’t Close the Tennis Gender Gap.” Sportico.Com, Sportico.com, 12 Sept. 2023, www.sportico.com/leagues/tennis/2023/us-open-prize-money-gender-pay-gap-1234736498/.