I just read a snippet that Courtney Parks, a basketball player from the Oklahoma Sooners, was drafted into the WNBA at a starting salary of $41,000. That is a good starting pay for a new job, but I ask you: what is the starting pay for a man draftd into the NBA?
According to Information pulled off of tripatlas.com, which has information on the WNBA, the base salary of a starting rookie for the NBA was over $300,000 in 2007.
I guess the argument could be made that the NBA attracts more views, ergo more money via advertisment and ticket sales. Still, $41,000 versus $300,000 plus tells me that women play sports for the love of the game, not for personal fortunes. So why do we call the men of the game the hero's? Or should women be happy that they are jsut allowed to touch the ball without wearing a skirt?
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In theory, it should be equality on the basis of dollars per net viewer that a given rookie brings into the organization.
Sadly, as you note, the differential tells us more about the popularity of womens basketball vs mens then anything. But its true, womens ball tends to be very much more played for the love of the sport.
However, that being said, for either gender, it is such a stars and paupers system - the few who play pro because they are in the top 0.1% of their field can make a living, the rest do something else - I would guess that by the time anyone has played the game for however many years you need to train to play at that level (something like 8-12), most are either *very* motivated by the time they get there :)
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