Caitlin Clark, for those who don’t know, is a player on the women’s basketball team at University of Iowa. This season, she has become the NCAA’s all-time leading scorer in college basketball history for both men and women. Yet, people still fail to believe that she is an amazing player.
An ongoing trend on social media in the recent months is people who have typically only watched men’s basketball diminishing the success of women in the WNBA, saying things such as, “I can totally beat Caitlin Clark in a 1v1.”
The lack of respect towards women in sports is not something that is new, and Clark’s experience highlights a bigger problem: gender bias in sports. Women’s sports get less attention and support than men’s, from media coverage to sponsorship opportunities. This lack of visibility not only downplays female athletes’ achievements, but also suggests they’re less skilled or deserving in sports.
For the NBA the revenue as of 2022 is 10 billion, whereas for the WNBA, their revenue is 60 million. It is no secret that most people watch mens sports more.
A professor at Saint Paul’s Girls school named Cheryl Cooky has a very strong opinion on the matter of inequality in mens and womens sports.
“Men’s sports are going to seem more exciting,” Cooky explains. “They have higher production values, higher-quality coverage, and higher-quality commentary.”
Because of the higher revenue, the NBA simply has much more appeal than the WNBA. This, however, does not mean that the men in the NBA work any harder than the women in the WNBA. And although they both work tremendously hard, the average salaries for an NBA player is $9.6 million while the average for WNBA is $102,751. The highest paid NBA player is Stephen Curry with $48 million, and the highest paid WNBA player, Jewell Loyd, is $228,094.
Sareli Utley is a player for the Arizona Outkast, a team in the Women’s Football Alliance (WFA), In an article from the Tuscan Centennial, she describes how difficult it is being a woman in sports.
“‘Women, we have to work 10 times harder to do relatively anything when it comes to equality,’” Utley said. “‘You know, we’re still fighting for that mark.’”
Women still struggle to gain respect from the sports industry. It has been a long journey for women in sports, but it’s clear that the WNBA has been making big steps towards equality. With the direction things are going, and the fame of new stars like Caitlin Clark, there seems to be hope.
