THE Minister for Sport, Helen Grant, yesterday seized on a claim that in 30% of sports women are paid less prize money than men to advocate that sport needs to engage "in the battle for gender balance and fairness".
The Department of Culture, Media, and Sport is hosting a conference tomorrow which cites statistics from 57 sports as esoteric as cliff diving and ice sledge hockey. Instead of celebrating the fact that 70% of sports are sufficiently vibrant and economically established to pay equal prize money, Ms Grant is paying lip service to feminist agendas with no apparent consideration of practicality.
I support equal pay for women, and after more than 37 years of reporting sport for The Herald, I know that this paper has played an enormous role in giving due exposure to women's sport.
However, to suggest that women's football deserves the same rewards as the men's game is preposterous beyond belief.
The FA Cup (aired in 120 countries) has prize money of £1.8m. The women's equivalent is £5000. A catalogue of disparities includes the World Cup (£22m) with women receiving £630,000; Cricket World Cup (£2.5m/£47,000); and Open Championship £975,000/£298,000.
It is simply market forces.
TV moguls pay obscene amounts of money in rights fees and this permits clubs to pay equally obscene salaries to men whose "brains are all in their feet" as former Hibs manager Eddie Turnbull would have it.
Upwards of 60,000 people want to attend some men's football matches in the UK. This also brings in staggering sums. Attendance and viewing figures drive advertising and sponsorship revenue, clothing and boot sales, leisurewear.
Not until women's football generates similar interest do they deserve - or have any case for - equal prize money (or pay). The highest attendance at a WSL match last year was just over 2000.
If you can't put bums on seats, there is no commercial return, or justification, for paying equal prize money. It has nothing to do with discrimination. Whether we like it or not, it's simply dictated by the market.
It has taken well over 100 years of professional football to build the men's game into a multi-billion global industry. Until very recenty the women's game was completely amateur. Why should women's football feel entitled to the same prize money in an embryonic game than that built up over decades by the men's game?
Laura Massaro, first English woman to hold world and British squash titles simultaneously, received £16,300 less than the men's world champion Nick Matthew, who won £28,600 when he claimed the world crown for the third time last November. The reason Matthew won such a modest sum underpins the debate - insufficient interest in the sport compared to its competitors in the global sports market.
The first sport to offer equal prize money was tennis, forced on the US Open by the militant feminism of Billie Jean King in 1973. Wimbledon did not succumb until 2007.
I believe it is men, not women, who are being discriminated against in tennis. Women play three-set matches and fewer rounds, yet collect the same prize money as men who play five-set matches.
Easier women's tournaments mean they can more readily play doubles, thereby earning more money than most men are able to do. This is not equality - quite the reverse. Women are being paid more for less input, less time on court, fewer shots made, than men.
A total of 56 global sports were analysed. Out of 35 that pay prize money, 25 pay equally and 10 do not. Fourteen, including rugby union and hockey, pay no prize money. In horse racing and equestrianism, both sexes compete together. Five sports declined to respond.
In addition to tennis, disciplines which pay equal prize money include archery, athletics, canoeing, climbing, fencing, figure skating, gymnastics, swimming, lawn bowls, skating, ski-ing shooting, sailing, snowboarding and volleyball. Some of these, like athletics, have been paying equal prize money for decades.
Far more disturbing, to me, in reviewing this survey, is a fact that appears to have slipped past the sports minister unnoticed: of the 53 Para disciplines listed, only 17 offered any prize money at all. And none of them paid prize money equal to that offered to able-bodied athletes. There lies a far greater inequality. A greater injustice is manifest here. But the reason is the same. There is no commercial market big enough to sustain the level of prize money.
It's tough. It's cruel. But that's professional sport.
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