From crude sex toys being thrown on courts during WNBA games to women not making the Top 100 Paid Athletes list for the year 2025. In society, there seems to be a vague line between men’s sports and women’s sports. Regardless of the rise in popularity of women’s athletics, still today in many countries and states, women and men are still paid differently.
Athletes like Ilona Maher, an Olympic rugby player who embodies body positivity and has even released a muscular Barbie, have taken the world by storm. Amping up women’s audiences with a never-before-seen sold-out Rugby World Cup, with over $470,000 in tickets being placed, according to bbc.sports.com. Her salary, while not publicly disclosed, is estimated at around $34,383.78, based on the average pay of Bristol Bears athletes, which is the team Ilona Maher plays for. According to Florugby.com, a typical male Olympic rugby player earns, on average $101,636 per year.
Caitlin Clark, a women’s basketball player who played for the Iowa Hawkeyes and who has now entered the WNBA, has been sought after by many teams. Clark has been named the WNBA 2024 rookie of the year and is extremely popular amongst fans for her record-breaking performances. According to hawkeyeswire.com, her salary is estimated at $78,066 for the 2025 year. Based on research done on NBA players’ salaries after researching different teams and combining their averages, an NBA player who sits bench with fewer stats than hers earns around $8.45 million.
It seems to be a pattern that the best women athletes’ salaries will never inch close to the most mediocre male athletes’ salaries. And mediocre male athletes aren’t the only ones topping women’s sports. Even male sports mascots seem to be banking more than women athletes.
Rocky from the NBA Denver Nuggets is seen as one of the greatest mascots in all sports. His stunts and mountain lion character seem to be charming amongst fans. This grants him a $625,000 salary, according to impact.com. Yet the Denver Nuggets ‘ all-women’s dance team’s salary for each dancer is $39,124. According to NBA.com, the all-women’s dance team performs at non-profit organisations, pre-season, regular games, and playoffs, along with doing community service projects and coaching the DND junior kids dance program. Yet the Denver Nuggets dance team still makes significantly less than their competing mascot.
It is very knowledgeable that women athletes care deeply about their athleticism as much as men. Both men and women compete and hold themselves to higher standards when it comes to how well they condition and their regimens for workouts and competitions. Since this is the case for both athletes, equal pay should be expected. Especially when women are helping keep certain male-dominated sports in line.
For the first time in over 117 years, in 2013, wrestling was at risk of being dropped from the Olympics. Men’s freestyle and Greco-Roman wrestling, which have been in the Olympics since the late 1800s and early 1990s, were scheduled to be removed from the Olympics starting in 2020 to make room for other, more popular sports. Yet during this time, women’s high school and collegiate wrestling have been rapidly growing. Thanks to the new heavy involvement of women and girls beginning their journey in wrestling, women saved the sport from being excluded from the Olympics. Without the growth of women and high school girls joining the sport, it is fair to say that wrestling would have been dropped from the Olympics.
Understanding the very hefty difference between a man’s and a woman’s salary in sports should open new doors to why women should be deemed on the same playing field as men. While some contributions to women’s sports have granted a small number of athletes to be paid an abundant amount more. For example, after 64 years, DCC cheerleaders, after experiencing low pay, considering all their tenuous efforts from tough competition and training five days a week, to a straining diet and carefully curated physical appearances, thanks to the Netflix documentary America’s Sweetheart, a 400% raise was given to the well-deserving women athletes in June of this year.
While thousands of women athletes still struggle with unfair pay. Realising the amount of effort women put into sports and how much they help not only to improve women’s sports but also sports for all is a dire necessity to increase women’s salaries. Being aware of the differences in men’s and women’s athletic salaries is the first stepping stone to realising the true costs of what it means to play like a woman in 2025.
¨As a head coach for the girls’ cross country team and the girls’ swim team, I am fully aware of how hard young women work in their sports. While I am surrounded by other male athletes, I observed no difference between who necessarily works harder or athleticism; many of my women athletes can compete with their male counterparts and even beat them. I believe in an expletive yes to a world where women should get paid the same as men. I do not see why they shouldn’t, ¨ said Erin Roades, an AP Biology teacher and women’s head coach of the cross country and assistant head coach of the girls swim team.
