In 1996, the Women’s Sports Foundation paired with Evian Natural Spring Water to closely investigate the comparative earnings, exclusive of endorsements, of male and female professional athletes in the first Women’s Sports Foundation/Evian Athletes’ Earnings Gap Index.

In the past 30 years, Title IX has afforded millions of girls the opportunity to participate in athletics.  In 1972, 1 in 28 girls participated in high school athletics.  The idea of a college scholarship to continue playing sports was unheard of, and the possibility of having a professional career was perhaps only dreamed about.  Today, 1 in 2.5 girls participate in high school athletics, $180 million is awarded to female athletes to play at the collegiate level, and there are a variety of established professional women’s leagues.  Girls and women can now more than dream of making a career of playing sports.  During the 30^th anniversary year of Title IX, the Women’s Sports Foundation celebrates the achievements of countless female athletes but also examines the inequalities that remain.

In 1996, the Women’s Sports Foundation paired with Evian Natural Spring Water to closely investigate the comparative earnings, exclusive of endorsements, of male and female professional athletes in the first Women’s Sports Foundation/Evian Athletes’ Earnings Gap Index.  The chief finding was that significant inequality exists in prize money available to male and female athletes across many sports  (See Tables 1 and 2).

In the first study, we compared the total prize purses available to men and women as well as the average earnings of the top 10 male and female athletes in five sports – beach volleyball, bowling, downhill skiing, golf and tennis.  The average prize earnings of the top 10 male athletes were double that of females in tennis, meaning that for every $1.00 a man earned, a woman earned $.49 (1:.49), followed by bowling (1:.46), skiing (1:.30), and beach volleyball (1:.20) (See Figure 1).   The study also found that the 1995-1996 average salary of male NBA players, $1.7 million, was 24 times greater than the average salary of female players, $70,000 in the newly formed American Basketball League (1996-1997 season).

The second study, conducted from 1996-2000, revealed continuing inequities but significant declines in the earnings gaps in tennis, bowling, golf and skiing.  Over the five-year period, the average prize earnings of the top 10 male and female athletes were closest in bowling (1:.70), followed by tennis (1:.67), and golf (1:36).   The 1999-2000 average NBA salary rose to $3.17 million per player, while the average WNBA salary for the same season was $55,000, making the NBA average 58 times higher than the WNBA.  Beach volleyball was not repeated in the 1996-2000 study because both the men’s and women’s tours experienced interruptions in play and prize money during that period.  For basketball, only the average salaries for all players were available.

Tracking the total purses, average salaries and total earnings of athletes is essential in the analysis of equality.  As women’s professional leagues grow in both sponsorship and interest, the Women’s Sports Foundation will continue to monitor the data, educate the media and public, and work with professional leagues to increase sponsorship and fan development.  What can you do as a fan?  You can help us help them.  Become a member of the Women’s Sports Foundation.  Write a letter to thank a sponsor of one of the many women’s professional leagues. Take your family to women’s professional games or buy season tickets to your favorite teams.  Write a letter to Congress through our new Web content area, www.GeenaTakesAim.com, and tell them how important it is to support women’s athletics.  Learn about the history of Title IX, about how far women have come and how far women still have to go.  For complete results of both studies, please visit the Foundation’s Web site at www.WomensSportsFoundation.org or AOL Keyword: WSF.

Jennifer Arndt was the Education Intern at the Women’s Sports Foundation in Fall 2001. This article first appeared in the Spring 2002 issue of the Women’s Sports Experience. Data for the 1996-2000 study was collected and complied by Helene Sisti, Temple University doctoral student and former Foundation intern.

Offers a comprehensive evaluation of the linkages, both positive and negative, between sport and adolescent health risks. The Women’s Sports Foundation presents these findings in order to foster serious dialogue over the benefits and risks of adolescent athletic participation. The fact that sports has positive impacts on many young people’s lives cannot be argued. This report analyzes some of the multifaceted connections of the sports experience to the health, safety, and fitness of American teenagers.

Read the full report below.

This study fills a major gap in research, revealing that sports may well be an untapped resource in the nation’s struggle to prevent teen pregnancy. Many Americans believe that sports help to lower girls’ risk for pregnancy. Parents breathe easier because their daughters are busy and chaperoned while attending after-school sports programs. Coaches tell stories about girls for whom the self-esteem supplied by sports helped ward off peer pressures to have sex. Some corporate advertisers point to sport as a key solution to the problem of teen pregnancy.

Until now, how and why working women integrate sports and fitness activities into their personal and professional lives has been the subject of speculation and not much research. This study is the first to explore the role of sports and exercise in the lives of women who work outside the home.

The Miller Lite Report on Sports and Fitness in the Lives of Working Women is based on a national random sample of 1,577 American women working in white-collar occupations and professions. These range from executives, professionals, administrators and managers to technicians, sales and clerical personnel. About two-thirds of American working women are employed in these fields.

Among the more significant findings of the research is that most working women participate in some kind of sports activity. And they believe that these activities have positive effects that help them on the job.

Coed sports activities have become a new reality for athletic women in America today, a transformation accompanied by a serious search for athletic partners of similar skill levels, particularly among younger women, and a confident certainty that participation in sports does not diminish femininity. Among women sports enthusiasts today, a commitment to “feminism” has little relation to athletic attitudes and behavior, and the women who were both most active in organized sports/fitness activities in their teens and twenties or who are most active today tend to share a single specific childhood experience: they played mostly with boys or mixed gender groups rather than mostly with other girls.

Conducted in September and October, 1985, by New World Decisions, a New Jersey based opinion research firm that mailed lengthy questionnaires to a random sample of 7000 members of the Women’s Sports Foundation, the survey addressed a wide range of questions about sports/fitness activities: interest in participating or watching specific sports, early childhood experiences, the support of family and friends, current encounters with coed participation, and attitudes toward a variety of topical issues, including whether drugs are necessary to become competitive internationally, whether participation in racially mixed sports groups reduced prejudice, whether girls should play contact sports and how often women prefer to watch or participate in single sex or coed/sport fitness activities.