Les inégalités entre les hommes et les femmes dans le monde du sport

AMC ORAL :

“The time has come to give these athletes what they deserve : equality’’ says

Serena Williams about the lawsuit against the U.S. Soccer Federation by the

Women’s National Soccer Team for gender discrimination. They filed a complaint for unequal pay and working conditions, things that have become commonplace for women in sports. Indeed, female athletes have always been paid much less than male athletes, even if they perform at the same level or reach similar levels of success. However, the pay gap is not the only problem, women are also victims of sexism, discriminations and many other issues that do not improve gender inequality.

Then we can wonder to what extend achieving gender equality in sport is realistic.

First of all, we will see that it is a real challenge because they are many inequalities but that it is nevertheless possible and achievable with continued efforts and commitment from all of us. In order to answer this question, we will analyze 5 documents : 2 articles from the newspaper The Guardian, 2 other articles from the websites sportspromedia.com and goalfive.com and an iconographic document from the website womenpandb.weebly.com

1. A real challenge because they are many inequalities

Achieving gender equality in sport is a challenging and complex goal.

Indeed, women face many inequalities and have always done so. In most sports,

they are often paid significantly less than their male counterparts, even for the

same level of performance. In document D, we can see a table with average

salaries of sportsmen and women according to the different sports they play. We

can see that in softball and baseball, male players earn more than 4 million dollars and female players on the contrary only 6 thousand. And this is only one example among many others. Serena Williams, the famous tennis player, also talks about these pay inequities in Document A. She believes that this is truly unfair and unjustified. Moreover, players of the U.S. women's soccer team even sued the organization in 2019 because they were paid a quarter of what the men earned. We can see that in Documents B and D, in which we learn that they have nevertheless had better results than their male counterparts.

Salary spreads can amount to thousands of dollars and this can have a significant

impact on women who, according to studies, have to work several jobs or even

have to stop their career completely in order to find another job because they

aren’t paid enough.

In addition, women's sports events and athletes are often given less coverage in

the media and aren’t marketed properly. It has always been unequal because

leagues, sponsors and cameras are more often interested and focused on men and not women. In Document D, we learn that female athletes only gets 4% of sports media coverage and when they do, they are more likely to be sexualized than men. This lack of promotion is also noted in Document B. As a matter of fact, we can see, with the example of the WNBA, that there is a choice made at the expense of female players because men are much more promoted and marketed than women. This has a major impact on women’s visibility, which is therefore limited, as well as their possible financial support. Indeed, according to a 2018 Statista report, women’s sport receive only 0.4% of total sponsorships because corporate sponsors didn’t give more money to promote women’s league, thinking that they will not generate enough interest.

Discrimination and criticism are also two types of things that women constantly

face in sports. Indeed, all women in the sport industry are affected by these issues. Unequal treatments, sexualization, discrimination and many others, are examples that may represent the daily life of some women. In Document A, Serena Williams complains that women are always treated differently than men. She is reminded all the time that she is a woman as if it was a defect and mostly judged on her gender and not her achievements. In Document C, we note that the percentage of women who suffer from discrimination is high. Indeed, almost 40% of « women working in sport said they had experienced active discrimination because they were female ». It is an alarming finding but the most shocking information is : 72% of men who see no case of inequality.

In Document E, we can see on the right Gabby Douglas, an American gymnast,

and on the left Michael Phelps, a swimming athlete. In the cartoon, we have two

champion athletes of the games, both winning gold, but with different response.

Indeed, Michael Phelps, receives a tweet from “Debbie Smith” saying how proud she is to be an American because of him whereas her response to Gabby Douglas’s winnings is quite the contrary, she criticizes her hair and doesn’t mention her victory at all. This cartoon symbolizes the discrimination between men and women in sports.

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