If you’re like me, you are surprised at the disparity between the pay for the first round draft pick in the WNBA as opposed to the NBA. Those amounts are 76,535 dollars (Caitlin Clark) and 10,500,000 (Victor Wembanyama).
I am well aware that the NBA makes a lot more money than the WNBA but the disparity is pretty incredible. It is most fortunate that Clark can still get extra money from endorsements but it does bring to mind how we value women as opposed to men.
Women’s sport have been in a long, long climb toward substantive budgets and attention. Women get less money at a every step in the ladder. Now, I am rather old and I can remember when women’s college sports had virtually no measurable budget at all. So, there has been a lot of progress but I absolutely sympathize with those that find the current numbers appalling.
One person upset by the amount paid the new WNBA draft pick was the President of the United States. Here are two quotes and the links to the articles.
https://www.yahoo.com/lifestyle/president-joe-biden-weighs-wnba-182940790.html
US President Joe Biden has called for female athletes to be “paid what they deserve” amid ongoing outrage surrounding Caitlin Clark’s rookie contract with the WNBA.
https://sports.yahoo.com/joe-biden-calls-fair-pay-195103809.html
On Tuesday, Biden wrote on X, formerly Twitter, that “women in sports continue to push new boundaries and inspire us all.” “But right now we’re seeing that even if you’re the best, women are not paid their fair share,” he wrote. “It’s time that we give our daughters the same opportunities as our sons and ensure women are paid what they deserve.”
Although there is a great deal of controversy over the salary. Caitlin Clark was rightfully full of pride and jubilant on her drafting. Here is what she said and a link to the quote.
“I think the biggest thing is I’m just very lucky to be in this moment and all these opportunities and these things, they’re once in a lifetime,” she says, reflecting on a whirlwind couple of months. “When things might get tiring or you have to do stuff, I think the biggest thing is look at it just as an opportunity. This isn’t something everybody gets to do. It’s once in a lifetime, and just trying to soak in every single experience because I know how quick of a turnaround it is, and I have a lot of people helping me.”
https://www.cnn.com/2024/04/16/sport/caitlin-clark-indiana-fever-wnba-draft-spt-intl/index.html
It is important that you have faith in my numbers. Here is my source for the salaries listed above.
https://www.vox.com/24132057/caitlin-clark-wnba-draft-2024
Despite her record-breaking performance in the NCAA and the energy that she’s generated for the sport, Clark’s base salary will be $76,535 as a rookie. In the NBA, meanwhile, the first draft pick is expected to make roughly $10.5 million in base salary their first year.
In 2022, the NCAA reporting on expenditures in College Sports showed the stark difference in investment between males and females.
The report, released Thursday and entitled “The State of Women in College Sports,” found 47.1% of participation opportunities were for women across Division I in 2020 compared to 26.4% in 1982. Yet, amid that growth, men’s programs received more than double that of women’s programs in allocated resources in 2020 – and that gap was even more pronounced when looking at home of the most profitable revenue-generating sports: the Football Bowl Subdivision, the top tier within Division I that features the Alabamas, Ohio States and Southern Californias of the sports world.
So, here we have the stark disparity between female and male sports. You can see it in Caitlin Clark’s salary and in overall investment between the two in colleges and universities across the United States.
What do we do? I’m sure there are those who would claim we’re making progress and isn’t that enough? Much, probably, almost all of the money invested in college sports is public money or income derived from public money. And this suggests that simple fairness demand equal investment in both sexes.
Further, we have to not just be astonished at the salary disparity but commit ourselves to action, commit ourselves to change. Accepting the status quo is not the path to justice, fairness and the full development of human potential.
Think of the future that could be if we will it and invest our money in a new and better world.
James Alan Pilant
Pilant's Business Ethics Blog 
Pay disparity in sports is nothing new. We can look to tennis for a useful comparison with why women’s professional basketball players are paid so much less than men–e,g., Caitlin Clark. It took outcries of unfairness and boycotts, and the leadership of Billie Jean King, to bring some sense of parity to pay in tennis. After the US Tennis Open’s equal pay move in 1973, the other three Grand Slam tournaments followed albeit slowly. The Australian Open joined in 1984 but didn’t again from 1996 to 2000. And it wasn’t until 2006 that the French Open followed and finally Wimbledon in 2007. Still, equal pay for women is a fact only for major tournaments. The real reason that pay has become more equal, non-discrimination laws aside, is the quality of women’s tennis has improved steadily over the years so the market for their product has been catching up. The same will happen for women’s basketball. Anyone who watched the NCAA tournament that made Caitlin Clark a household name recognizes the increase in quality–and resulting interest of the public. I believe women’s basketball will move towards equal pay in a meaningful way starting this season when the arenas are full of fans when Clark plays, and there will be others to follow her as she blazes a trail to greater interest by young women in playing basketball professionally.
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Well said! Please comment often! They are always welcome. jp
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