Right on the button

From the demise of the Canadian Women’s Hockey League to racism and bullying in the National Hockey League, it’s been a bad year for the winter sport that Canadians take such pride in.

Perhaps that makes it extra refreshing to hear such good news coming from one of our other popular winter sports: curling.

Canada’s top men’s and women’s teams will now compete for the same prize money at the 2020 national championships. It’s a big change and one that is long overdue. This coming February, curling teams at the Tim Hortons Brier (the men’s championship) and the Scotties Tournament of Hearts (the women’s championship) will play for total purses of $300,000, with the winners receiving $105,000.

At the last event, the women’s total purse was just $165,000, with the winning team receiving $59,000.

The typical arguments for paying women so much less than men to play most sports hold little water, and that’s particularly true in curling.

They play the same game with the same equipment and rules and it’s one that rewards strategy and touch over strength. And they’re equally popular. At the last Brier and Scotties the women, who were paid half as much, attracted a similar overall average viewership and considerably higher numbers for their final.

But, no doubt, the biggest difference-maker was Curling Canada’s chief executive, Katherine Henderson, who decided to make equal pay a priority three years ago and pushed to make it happen.

“It’s not that we didn’t know what the right thing to do was,” Henderson says. “It was just taking the right steps to get there and make it sustainable.”

Let’s hope her example provides some much needed encouragement for other sport executives to look at ways to close their gender pay gaps.

C’mon, hurry hard.