This page was created by Collin Hardwick. 

Gender Pay Gap in Sports

What Does "Proportional" Mean In Context?

           In the case of professional basketball, the two leagues in question are the National Basketball Association [NBA] and the Women’s National Basketball Association [WNBA]. The NBA, founded in 1946, has been around for 73 years, and has had all that time to amass a gigantic following. Each of the 30 teams is now worth over $1 billion each, and the league brought in a total revenue of $7.4 billion in its 2017 season (Forbes).

          By comparison, the WNBA is tiny. It was only founded in 1996 and has only had 23 years to build up a fanbase. As such, the women’s league doesn’t make nearly as much money as the men’s. The WNBA doesn’t publish any of its team revenues nor its players’ salaries, but it has been estimated by a number of journalists that the whole league made at least $35 million in 2016, significantly less than the NBA (Berri, “Basketball’s Gender”).

          These numbers are important in determining whether female professional basketball players are underpaid compared to their male counterparts. Because the NBA makes so much more money, it doesn’t make sense to compare the bare salaries of the female v. male players and hope to make an effective argument.

          Proportionality, in this case, comes down to percentages. Do the NBA players get paid the same percentage of their league’s revenue as the WNBA players do, and is it for the same amount of work? This is the question we are aiming to figure out.






Above image by Terrance Williams for the Washington Post.  https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2018/11/02/forbes-cuts-ties-with-sports-business-columnist-deletes-piece-about-wnba-player-salaries/?utm_term=.cee7bfbec0b4

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