Strength, technique, marketing, velocity and tempo are the main qualities athletes require to succeed. Nowadays, sport has become one of the greatest sources of income in the market and has and will always be a source of entertainment. For years sports have been divided into two sections in order to be fair, men and women compete separately moreover this has brought up strong and polemic opinions from the crowd. Which makes us think, should female athletes be paid the same as male athletes? taking into account their abilities.
Good morning, we are Carla Rengifo and Silvana Calvo and this is the never ending battle between men and women’s sports.
Marketing and performance go hand in hand with one another. For instance, Linda Caicedo is one of the most recognized Colombian football players, since she reached the Real Madrid League at her young age. She managed to accomplish her dreams by dedication and hope, for this reason she gained popularity for setting foot on the Madrid league, earning approximately the amount of 250.000 euros yearly. Now she is well recognized and appears in magazines or other social media platforms, adding the fact that her salary may be elevated depending on how well her performance is showing a good image, leaving Colombia’s name high.
In this same order of ideas, being a good athlete has to be with both natural skills and social context. Most of the athletes in the world have to confront the social prejudices for succeeding, and in the case of women, realizing the fact that there is not such good financing, that their salary is absurdly meager in comparison to men, as well as perceiving how sponsorships are so scarce. This shows how female athletes do not have physical barriers to practice a sport, but social and cultural barriers.
Although Linda Caicedo earns a good amount of money, she will never surpass male athletes such as Karim Benzema or Luka Modric no matter how hard she tries, because biologically men are stronger and faster than women considering their bone structure. Children have similar abilities but once they reach puberty, their development is different, furthermore women's bone structure is less dense, and have a bigger Q angle because of the size of their hips, which means that women end up with 6 times more knee injuries in sports such as football. For all that, this means that men will have more ability to power through their legs on things like sprinting or jumping. This is a disadvantage for women when it comes to demonstrating what they are capable of, but unfortunately there is no way to fix it.
Their abilities are reflected depending on what type of sport they are playing but most of the time men tend to do it not better but quicker. Studies indicate women have a better technique than men, but sometimes strength has more impact than knowing all the moves. That is why men are known for being better at sports, they are stronger, despite that it is important to know how to channelize this energy. Given the fact that the male hormone testosterone develops an important role in the preservation of the typical physical characteristics of men, including strength and muscle mass. “Testosterone is the most important sex hormone in men and is responsible for typically male characteristics such as muscle development, but it also helps bone health” said Francois Peinado, head of Urology Service of the Ruber Juan Bravo 39 Hospital, in Madrid.
Testosterone is an advantage, it gives men a muscular upper hand, it is one of the reasons why men and women do not compete in a unisex category, even an athletic transgender woman will not stop producing hormones such as this one and even if she does, her bone structure will not be the same one of a biological woman, giving her an insane advantage and it would not be fair with the other women in the female category, this is the case of Lia Thomas. A transgender woman that is part of the swimming team at the University of Pennsylvania.
In 2018, before Lia’s transition, she was ranked top #8 in several different categories, in the process of the hormonal transition she was ranked top #452 her numbers dropped quite dramatically; hence her low finishes, she had to compete in the men’s team for a long time while transitioning before she met eligibility to compete on the women’s team. She was ranked top #1 in the women’s team, this caused many complaints between Lia and her teammates. To this day, there are still conversations about this topic and how unfair this looks in the sports industry.
According to a social experiment, approximately 12 women were asked if WNBA players should get paid as much as NBA players, to which they answered yes. Complementary to this, these same women were asked to name the name of a WNBA player, and surprisingly none of them could name a single one, even if they are women, the scope of WNBA matches on sports channels or social networks is much lower than men. NBA games sell more tickets than women's games, so it’s all about social reach.
Likewise, it can be taken as an example of the situation of some scientists whose discoveries had been taken credit for. Throughout the years, it has been some circumstance like this, a person making a great discovery, even so, given the credit to another person for the most common reason, for the lack of social reach. Even though they discovered something incredible, more recognition was given to another because they had more visibility.
After all this deliberation, our answer to the initial question is that female athletes should not be paid the same as male athletes in the sports domain. We know how it sounds, that is why we wanted to choose this topic, we wanted to study both sides and more importantly, we know that for being a woman is much easier to say female athletes should be paid the same; nevertheless, the truth is that in the sports field today this would not be possible, and it's all thanks to science and the social range that shows us that we can’t change our structure and social ambit matters more even if we don’t want to. This is not the answer many people want to hear but it is the one that all of us need to acknowledge.
“Face reality as it is, not as it was or as you wish it to be.” -Jack Welch.
Thank you very much.
By Silvana Calvo and Carla Rengifo, Step 9
