How to solve the pay gap between men and women

Equal pay for equal play. Such a simple but complicated proposition, isn’t it? It’s a debate that comes up every time the Indian men’s and women’s cricket teams annual contracts are compared. The fact that the lowest paid men’s cricketer earns double that of the highest paid female cricketer escapes no one.

These numbers invite the usual barrage of opinions. “Women don’t earn the kind of revenue that the men earn. Women don’t pull in crowds.” There are catchy facts to put each of these opinions into context, even refute some of them. But they are for another day.

Today, I’ve been thinking about how a few other countries organise their contracts and whether that might be a system that would solve the Equal Pay debate. It’s also something my co-author Karunya Keshav laid out quite simply in our report on women’s cricket in India— Equal Hue: The Way Forward for the Women in Blue—published last year.

“Contracts should be split into fixed and flexible components, with no gender discrimination on fixed components.”

(The entire section of equal pay in our Equal Hue report is highly recommended, my co-author has done a fine job.)

Sounds sensible? Fixed and variable components to salaries is not a new idea. We see it all the time in the corporate world, especially in performance driven fields like sales. Is it a good fit for cricket?

Australia has a fixed ‘pay rate’ for all national team members—male and female—which is then multiplied by the number of days they play. Plus a variable pay that is directly linked to the market value of the respective teams.

Personally, I’m perfectly happy for Indian women’s cricketers to be paid based on the value they generate. This also incentivises every player to do their bit to grow the game, on and off the field.

But to pay them only for the value they generate is to me, wrong on two levels: Firstly, it fails to respect the hard work a Mithali Raj puts in every day, and has put in for 20 years, just as much hard work as a Sachin Tendulkar put in (usually for much lesser reward). And secondly, it fails to recognise that women’s cricket’s value has not grown as it should, for no fault of the players.

Some countries, like Australia, provide for an additional element in the pay of their women’s team. This element is in acknowledgement of the fact that women’s cricket has been historically under-invested in, and therefore under-consumed.

I’ll leave it to the number crunchers and red tapers to see if such a system fits for India. But as a player, if I knew I was being paid a fixed amount for my ‘work’, the same as my male colleagues were, I’d feel pretty equal. Even if our absolute salaries looked different. Complicated, but simple. Plus, it would make my organisation look good too.

A word of caution: This approach needs to be paired with proactive and visionary steering of the women’s game. Players are both employees and product, and you cannot sell a product unless you invest in it and market it well. Viewership and crowd numbers are only rising. The T20 Women’s World Cup, where India reached the final, was the second most viewed ICC event ever, behind only the 2019 Men’s World Cup, and ahead of all Under-19 World Cups. The Women’s T20 Challenge exhibition matches have attracted crowds, sponsors and were ‘self sustainable’ in 2020. And in multiple venues, India women have packed grounds, with more spectators than seats. That’s a demand-supply reality if there ever was one.

With such vision in place, it might be worth delinking the commercial value of Indian women’s team from the men’s team. Women’s cricket is currently bundled into BCCI commercial arrangements with shirt sponsors and broadcasters—an add on, along with domestic and Under-19 internationals.

It is a model that has worked so far, but there’s plenty of evidence to suggest that women’s cricket can now stand on its own feet.

Another word of caution: If the Indian women’s team is the product, then domestic cricket is the supply line. And despite how strongly I feel about equal pay at the top level, this is where increased investment is needed, and my previous writing on equal pay has reflected this. The data says that 54% of women’s state cricketers faced financial difficulty playing cricket. The unborn ghost of a proper Women’s IPL looms as a solution.

How about equality on that front first?