For the first time in 20 years, the gender pay gap has widened despite a slow narrowing over the last 40 years. Last year, women who work year-round, full-time saw their wages go up only 1.5%, while year-round, full-time working men saw their wages go up 3% — this was found by the US Census Bureau, and reported on September 12 by Axios and Marketplace, among other publications.
According to a March 2024 report on Equal Pay Day, the wage gap for full-time, year-round working women was 84 cents to the man’s dollar. Women, on average, earn less than their male counterparts, even when the women hold higher degrees. That’s not to mention the disparities that women of color see, which often raises the gap in wages, as compared with white women and men.
Women also tend to hold positions in industries that have seen smaller growth in wages, like education and healthcare, as opposed to fields like manufacturing in which wages have gone up.
Yet despite this week’s news on the gender wage gap, professional and economic opportunities are more available than ever before for women.
In professional sports, for example, women’s games are gaining unprecedented recognition. Opportunities for women in professional sports are rarer and more highly coveted than for men; while there are 30 NBA teams, there are only 12 WNBA teams, for the 32 NHL teams, there are only six PWHL teams, and for the 30 MLB teams and the 32 NFL teams, women have rare opportunities like Athletes Unlimited and the Women’s National Football Conference. Some female athletes can’t even continue to play professionally because their sport doesn’t have women’s leagues past the college level.
Professional female athletes also only earn a fraction of what their male counterparts do. Caitlin Clark, this year’s first-round WNBA draft pick, was contracted for a fraction of what the NBA’s first-round draft pick was.
But over the past decade, audience sizes for women’s teams have started to increase, bringing more attention and opportunity to their athletes. Just in the past three years, Clark and Angel Reese have had an unmatched effect on the WNBA and college basketball: During the opening games of Clark and Reese’s rookie season this year, television viewership tripled from 462,000 average viewers last year to 1.32 million viewers. Multiple teams are even set to join the league in its latest expansion, including the newest WNBA team in Portland in 2026. As we’ve learned, especially in the past year, everybody watches women’s sports.
Even better than the recent rise in equality for women’s basketball is the U.S. Open. Earlier this month when Jannik Skinner and Aryna Sabalenka won the men’s and women’s U.S. Open champion titles, respectively, they were both paid the same amount of money. Setting the standard for equality, both the men and women’s champions of the U.S. Open have been paid equally for over 50 years. In general, tennis is a leader in closing the gender wage gap — the Australian Open has been paying equally since 2001 and the French Open and Wimbledon have been paying equally since 2007.
Despite a potentially widening wage gap, the direction of women’s sports could indicate what’s to come. Following decades of inequality, women’s sports are finally getting their accolades as the industry has realized how profitable and positive it is for women’s sports to have the same stage as men. Perhaps the corporate world should take a page out of sports’ playbook; a narrowed wage gap could only bring positives to our economy.
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