Aysha Qureshi · @ayshaqureshi
29th Oct 2014 from TwitLonger
That Matthew Syed article: "The FA Women’s Super League is in a period of growth. Average attendances went up from 562 in 2013, the league’s first season, to 728 this year, an increase of more than 30 per cent. Manchester City, a new team in the league, have the highest average attendance, at 949. The BBC is now broadcasting selected games on BBC2 and providing updates on its website. For anyone enthusiastic about women’s football, and I count myself among their number, this is good news.
I mention all this to provide a bit of context after a “comprehensive” report published by the BBC yesterday. The survey found that in 30 per cent of sports, women earn less than men. The article accompanying the data was pretty severe in its tone. It quoted Helen Grant, the sports minister, who talked of a “battle for gender balance and fairness in the 21st century”. The implication was that women should be paid the same as men across sport.
It sounds like a noble objective, but the situation in football ought to demonstrate how silly it is. The reason that women are paid less than men is not because of sexism. It is not because of an unscrupulous cabal at the Premier League siphoning off money from the coffers of the female game. It is because male footballers drive bigger revenues, secure bigger audiences and command greater commercial income. It is free-market economics. The Premier League has an average attendance of 36,695, despite charging about 20 times more for tickets than the Women’s Super League. It sold its domestic television rights for the three seasons from 2013-14 for £3.018 billion. Measured in how they connect with their audience, men are effectively doing a very different “job” to their female counterparts.
It is for that reason, and that reason alone, that employers can afford to pay them bigger incomes. And this, in turn, shows that the real scandal in those BBC figures is not the sports that are failing to pay women as much as men, but those where men are being forced to cross-subsidise women. This is, perhaps, easiest to see in tennis. The men’s game is in the midst of a golden age, with the likes of Roger Federer, Rafael Nadal and Novak Djokovic exciting audiences around the world. On the women’s side, few could name the past four grand-slam singles champions.
The additional commercial clout of the men can be seen in (among other things) the prize money at ATP Tour events being significantly higher than in WTA events. Yet in the grand-slam events, men and women earn the same prize money. The US Open and the Australian Open equalised pay decades ago, and the All England Club followed suit in 2007, one year after Roland Garros. There is no logic to this. It is no more coherent than paying Steph Houghton, the captain of Manchester City’s women’s team, the same as Sergio Agüero. To deprive Federer of income by handing it to female players is not far from daylight robbery.
It is worth remembering that there is a simple mechanism through which sportswomen can earn the same as men: by persuading sponsors, fans and anyone else to back their product. That is the way most people earn their keep in the world and, try as I might, I cannot see why it should be different for female athletes. It is arbitrary (as well as deeply unimaginative) to force men, who just happen to play the same sport, to cross-subsidise them via an administrative decree. And it is anathema to any concept of fairness.
This is about far more than sport, of course. The stated objective of those campaigning on pay in sport is “equality”. Sadly, it is nothing of the sort. What they are trying to achieve is equality of outcome. They want to equalise rewards rather than equalise the opportunities to earn those rewards. This leads to dangerous places, as the sports minister ought to recognise. Imagine fourth-tier league footballers asking for equal pay to their Premier League brethren, or a male model seeking redress from Naomi Campbell because she secures greater appearance fees. This would rightly be regarded as a nonsense.
It is worth pointing out that one’s position on this issue has nothing to do with one’s admiration for women’s sport. I have rarely gained more pleasure as a spectator than when Jessica Ennis won gold in the heptathlon at London 2012, or when Virginia Wade won Wimbledon in 1977, or Victoria Pendleton rocketed to victory in successive Olympic Games. The rivalry between Chris Evert and Martina Navratilova remains among the most vivid in history.
My admiration for women’s sport is one reason why I have attended (and spoken at) conferences aimed at increasing its profile. It is why I have watched with enthusiasm as female ambassadors have taken to the stage and attempted to persuade corporate audiences to back them. This is the way to drive change: by persuading stakeholders, fans and editors. It is about entrepreneurism, dynamism and sensitivity to market realities. It is not about snaffling money from men who play the same sport. That is a short cut to nowhere except resentment and incoherence. If campaigners for women’s sport wish to make headway, they should, at the very least, identify the right targets.
In tennis, these are not difficult to recognise. For many decades, women have had to endure the insulting tradition of playing matches over three sets rather than five at the grand-slam events.
The original idea (rather like the one that excluded women from the marathon) was that the “fairer sex” wouldn’t be able to cope with the demands of the longer format. This blatant symbol of sexism extends from London to Paris and from Melbourne to New York. Yet where is the campaign from female players? Where is the threat of boycott? Where is the indignation?
It is a notable irony that the most egregious discrimination in the history of sport was endured by black people in the 19th and early 20th centuries. Great athletes such as Sam Langford, the boxer, and John Henry Lloyd, the baseball player, were barred from competing with their white rivals because, well, they were not white. Sporadically, over the course of a 50-year period, leading sports dropped the doctrine of racial segregation, allowing people of all different colours to compete on the same footing. These were important milestones on the path to racial equality.
Women have never faced any such bars; quite the reverse. In most sports, they are free to compete against men, on an equal footing. They choose not to take up the invitation, except in a few rare exceptions, such as bowls and equestrianism. This is not supposed to be a trite point, or a chauvinistic one. It is merely to highlight the gall of those who campaign for equal pay. They wish to compete in segregated events; they wish to bar men from competing against them; but when men earn more, they also reserve the right to demand compensation.
People talk about the symbolism of equal pay in sport, but it is symbolic of nothing except economic illiteracy and political correctness. It is bad for sport, bad for men and, by creating distorted incentives, bad for women. The campaign that feminists ought to be embracing is that of getting more women (and men) through the turnstiles to watch female sport.
Twenty years ago, most fans preferred women’s tennis matches to men’s, which were dominated by serve and volley, with few rallies. Steffi Graf and Navratilova, on the other hand, offered marvellous, compelling contests. Their superstar status was reflected in annual earnings that, in many cases, eclipsed the men. There was nothing sexist about this. There was nothing underhand. In fact, they deserved every penny they earned."