Gender Differences in the Pay of Professional Basketball Players

Abstract

This chapter undertakes a comparison of pay in women's basketball with an emphasis on its inception in North America. Through a quantitative approach, we find players are undervalued in the Women's National Basketball Association (WNBA) compared to men's basketball, men's soccer, and women's basketball in Europe and Asia. By comparing leagues at the same period in their life cycles, we show that women are underpaid even after accounting for the age of the league. The relatively low pay in the WNBA, even when compared to the identical formative time period in the men's professional league, led 48% of American WNBA players to seek employment in basketball leagues in Europe and Asia in 2019. In these leagues, players receive much higher salaries. We explain these wage inequities based on business structure and economic theory. In sum, both the WNBA and National Basketball Association (NBA) are primarily profit-maximising leagues, but NBA players have always been paid a higher percentage of league revenues than the women of the WNBA. This was even true when the NBA had a much lower level of revenue. Salaries in the WNBA are then further depressed by a league that seems to prioritise short-run profit maximisation over long-run investment, thus continuing to delegitimise the WNBA. Ultimately, the constraints to pay derive from not only gendered systems but also the structure of profit-maximising leagues and teams in the United States.