What’s the score?
Some said it could never be done – that female athletes in team sports would never be paid as much as their male counterparts – but some recent negotiations have given reason for hope.
In August, women were the big winners in cricket when a deal was struck to boost the minimum annual retainer for elite female players by 119 per cent over the next five years. The deal, said to be the biggest pay rise in the history of women’s sport in Australia, will see the payment pool for women grow from $7.5 million to $55.2 million. By 2021/22, elite players will receive a minimum annual retainer of $88,000. That means star players Ellyse Perry and Meg Lanning could earn more than $300,000 a year, including sponsorship deals and match payments.
At the same time, Netball Australia is leading the way in working conditions, with clubs paying for infants to travel with their mothers and providing a carer to travel with the team, private health insurance and income protection for up to two years in the event of injury or pregnancy. Netball Australia’s Marne Fechner says the salary and conditions negotiated in 2016 have allowed two athletes, Renae Ingles and Rebecca Bulley, to return to playing at the elite level in Suncorp Super Netball after having children.
And in soccer, top Matildas players are now on $130,000 per year, allowing them to train and play full-time.
While these deals show that women are making headway, the gender pay gap in sports, generally, is so extreme that it’s not going to disappear any time soon. The 2017 Global Sports Salaries Survey notes that female soccer players are likely to earn as little as a hundredth the amount of their male counterparts. And according to Economic Security4Women, a Commonwealth-funded women’s alliance, the average wage for a male AFL player is $302,104 per season, yet combined remuneration for a full female AFL team of 25 is $190,000.
Closing the pay gap is still a work in progress but various codes and their sponsors are establishing better career pathways for women. The Australian Institute of Sport and BlueScope offer a Change the Game program, which pairs elite female athletes with business leaders to help them learn how their skills might translate to post-sport careers. And the Male Champions of Change’s Women in Sport Sponsorship program aims to accelerate more women into leadership positions in sports management.