Ep. 29 | Equal Pay, Equal Work

The Balance Cast with Lex Lowry

Lex questions the authenticity of the feminist mantra "Equal Pay, For Equal Work". Female athletes in the sports world feel as if women aren't paid a fair salary compared to their male counterparts. After the Women's US Soccer Team won this year's World Cup Tournament they have filed a lawsuit against the USSF (United States Soccer Federation) for gender discriminatory practices in pay equity when the Men's team have failed to qualify last year. Subsequent to this story there has been another outcry of salary disparity from WNBA players demanding the same percentage of revenue NBA players are receiving from their organization. In light of these news breaks, one must bare in mind that the advocation for equal pay in this third wave of feminism, seem to disregard multiple factors that contribute to the wage differences. As a result mainstream media rushes to label this report as a "wage gap" hysteria that is solely due to male privilege under the benefit of the patriarchal system. One must ponder if feminist genuinely adhere to their own slogan. Feminists failure to fight for equality where there are women being paid more than men in male dominated fields as well as other professions dominated by women. In the case of sports there's a failure in acknowledging on how the women's league generates revenue, while not performing the same number of games in their schedule and attracting viewership in comparison to men's sports. There's an imbalance of information in need of clarification in how these profit numbers are calculated and allocated in the sports entertainment market.