First off- I completely agree with pay equality. If a woman is doing the same job then they deserve the same pay.
However, why should gender dictate exactly what you earn?
In my opinion, true pay equality links pay directly to performance/revenue generation, regardless of gender, race, age etc.
This is the way it should be.
In most industries, woman do the same thing and bring in the same as men, hence deserve the same pay = fair.
However in sports, this always varies. At the elite level, woman's sport has a great following and demands equal pay to men = fair.
However woman's football in Australia doesn't yet. I think it's fair for pay to be relative if they're only bringing in a fraction of revenue compared to the men.
And this has nothing to do with gender. If the youth league players were full time, I wouldn't expect them to be paid the same as the men because they don't bring in as much, have as much of a following, generate the same revenue etc.
This difference in pay has nothing to do with gender and everything to do with performance = fair.
I think that's a fair argument and obviously because men and women's sport is so segregated its far easier to see the revenue men and women bring to the table, although I think that stems from the fact that women are never going to catch up to the men as far as revenue if they are never afforded genuine opportunities to do so. Men have been lucky enough to have competitive sport organised for them for hundreds of years. For a time women weren't even allowed to play football. So I don't see how they are going to be able to generate more income and interest when they aren't able to offer a quality product.
Like when Bart Simpson goes to a new school he goes to remedial learning and they expect him to catch up to the other students by going slower than them.
No one is calling for equal pay as far as the top HAL earners, that would be ridiculous, but for all HAL and WL players to earn a full time wage for full time hours "worked" is I think fair. The fact the Melb City are actually paying the $150k salary cap in full is one thing that club should be well and truly applauded for. People complain that the women's game is boring compared to the men, (something I agree with) but when we take into account these women are probably training full time while working or studying full time, using sub-standard equipment and facilities and at best are semi-professional, we should be expecting the same performance out of NPL players then if that is the case. The fact that some of the Malitdas had to pay their own way home from the last World Cup highlights the inadequacy.
IMO equal pay for men and women across the board of society to me will never happen as women work so much less than men so statistically they aren't ever as a group going to reach men, but equal entry level pay is what we should all be affording women, a many industries men are offered higher entry level salaries compared to women. Law is one industry that does that.
As we've seen with the AFLW that a professional women's league can attract sponsorship that otherwise may not have been interested in sponsoring professional sport. There are also a huge number of people around who are turned off by the macho male dominated culture that professional sport harbours, but many of those people want to see women make it in a 'man's world' so I think some of those people would be attracted to a women's league. I believe that a well backed professional women's league can provide benefits to the game that the men can't offer.
I think this is a long term thing though. We're not going to see a huge swell of interest just because women are suddenly paid equally to enter the game. This is generational thing so girls growing up can know that if they want to become a professional athlete they have more than tennis, golf and pole dancing to aspire to.
