Gender equality in sport - A big idea that will shape 2024?

LinkedIn just shared its predictions about the ‘15 Big Ideas that will shape 2024’. Among them, it is said that ‘a revolution in women’s sports will take shape.’

LinkedIn expects that, in the coming 12 months, women athletes will become highly visible and be rewarded fairly. This revolution is expected to extend across sports, leagues and borders.

Wouldn’t that be brilliant?

We thought it was worth reflecting on the colossal amount of work it took, over half a century, to get to this point, and to salute all the women (and men) who have fought long and hard for this to happen.

We are also reflecting on what is happening right now, in cricket, having been closely associated with the efforts of the Independent Commission for Equity in Cricket (ICEC) to achieve gender pay parity in that sport.

Fighting deep inequalities in sport?

Pay equity in sport has not been generously gifted to women by magnanimous men. It has been - and continues to be - the outcome of hard-fought battles.

There were high-profile cases, foremost among which is Billie Jean King’s campaign to raise awareness of the gender pay gap. At the Italian Open in 1970, King was awarded $600, while her male counterpart, Ilie Nastase, earned $3,500. It is King’s threat of boycotting the US Open over pay differentials in 1973 that led the US Open to become the first Grand Slam to offer equal prize money.

Despite discrimination on the basis of sex being unlawful since for more than half a century, progress has remained slow and piecemeal. Equal pay has not been forthcoming.

For instance, as recently as 2015, the US Women’s Soccer Team won the FIFA World Cup but women were still paid much less than the men’s team, who lost in the first knock-out round. Women filed a wage discrimination complaint with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission against the US Soccer Federation but, as no progress had been made four years down the line, they had to sue again in 2019.?

In the UK, the Football Association finally decided to pay equally the England Women's and Men's national football teams in 2020 - that’s just three years ago. The triumph of the Lionesses in the 2022 EUFA Cup showed what can happen when women’s sport is property resourced. And now, public attitudes seem to have shifted for good, with live attendance and viewership records now being shattered.?

How cricket in England and Wales was made to change

In 2017, cricket’s governing body, the England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB), was jolted into looking more closely at their gender pay gap by the introduction of regulations requiring all public, private and voluntary sector organisations of 250 employees or more to report annually on their gender pay gap.?

Six different measures are used to report, each giving a slightly different take on the organisation’s pay gap, and pointing to different issues that may need to be addressed.?

In cricket, the median and mean pay gap figures for 2022 showed that, despite meaningful progress between 2021 and 2022, the gap in the cricket workforce - excluding players - was very far from being closed.

In the higher echelons of the organisation, the median gender pay gap was much higher still, at 32.3% in the upper quartile, reflecting the fact that women are still not in positions of leadership and senior management: they are neither hired at a senior level nor progressed internally enough to close the pay gap. By contrast, in the most junior positions (the lower quartile), the median pay gap is smaller, at 9.1%.??

The gender pay gap data above is among employees only. It does not provide information about players’ salaries. Data about players’ pay gaps were subsumed under data for the entire workforce, making it hard to assess the scale of inequalities.?

However, the ICEC accessed this information. It found that the pay gap was much wider among players. In its landmark 2023 report on discrimination in cricket , the ICEC stated that “women [players] receive an embarrassingly small amount compared to men [players]” (p.12).?

Specifically, before the ECB implemented the ICEC’s Recommendations:

• England Women earned 20.6% of the average salary of England Men’s in white ball cricket
• England Women’s match fees were 25% of England Men’s for white ball matches
• England Women’s match fees were 15% of England Men’s for Test Matches
• England Women’s white ball captain’s allowance was 31% of the allowance awarded to the England Men’s white ball captain

The discrepancy was less stark, but still considerable, in the domestic game: the average domestic salary for women was just less than half of that for the average domestic men’s player.?

It is the ICEC report - to which Versiti is extremely proud to have contributed the evidence on lived experiences of discrimination - which changed the gender pay gap in cricket.?

The ECB was called upon to address the pay gender. Women's match fees have now been made equal with men’s: women are paid approximately ￡12,500 per Test match, ￡5,000 per one-day international and ￡3,500 per T20 international, like their male colleagues. But the ECB has not committed to the timeline recommended by the ICEC for achieving equality across all aspects of the game.?

So the good folks at LinkedIn are right : enormous progress has been made on pay and 2024 looks set to be a year of greater gender equality in sport. But - without wanting to spoilsport or come across like the Grinch Who Stole Christmas - we should never forget how long it is taking, how many legal challenges are needed and how much pain is experienced, before women athletes are treated as equal to their male peers.

We can and should do better.?

To find out more about how Versiti equips organisations with the evidence and insight to drive inclusion and equity, you can visit our website: www.versiti.co.uk.

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Here's to a more equitable 2024!