The pay gap is a scandal, outraged experts proclaimed. Others countered that last year’s Men’s World Cup generated 6 billion dollars, whose participants shared $400 million, or about 7 percent of total revenue. The Women’s World Cup is expected to generate $131 million, of which $30 million will be shared by the women’s teams, or about 23 percent of overall revenue. Arguably, compared to men, women were in fact vastly overpaid.
Supporters of the American women’s team respond, no doubt with some truth, that the difference in income is not a coincidence; this occurs in a cultural context where women are devalued. Their interlocutors point out, with at least some truth, that women are simply not as strong as men, nor as fast, and that their football matches are therefore not as exciting to watch.
I’ll leave the discussion of the sport’s intricacies to someone who knows how to keep a straight face while using “football” and “exciting to watch” in the same sentence. Instead, I’ll open my copy of “Anarchy, State and Utopia” and note that the philosopher Robert Nozick anticipated this question decades ago.
In a famous thought experiment, Nozick used legendary basketball player Wilt Chamberlain to explore what happens when perfectly innocent individual choices produce a pattern of income distribution that we don’t like.
Nozick asks us to imagine that society has achieved what everyone considers a fair distribution of income, so much so that a basketball team offers Chamberlain 25 cents on every dollar raised if he only comes to play for her. If Chamberlain takes his 25 cents out of every dollar paid by a million fans, thereby changing the distribution of revenue, is that still fair? After all, those who paid this money had the right to it, and probably also the right to give it away. What right do we have to challenge their choice?
The parallels with the Women’s World Cup are close, right down to the relevant percentages. The fans who avidly followed the men’s tournament certainly did nothing wrong. And it is difficult to argue that each of them had a moral obligation to take such an interest in women’s football.
Even if we could stop them from monitoring men more than women, should we? And if not, should we expect FIFA to pay female football players?
three times their total tournament revenue
to produce an income distribution that we prefer? Or level the distribution at the other end, taking money away from men who have done nothing wrong by playing well and attracting many fans?
It is tempting to answer that the fans’ choices are not
innocent, they are sexist. But as we cannot peep into their hearts, to say this definitively, we should suppose that the greater speed, strength and endurance of men definitely do No
difference in the quality of sport. Fair enough, but then why do fans prefer to watch Megan Rapinoe perform instead of sedentary older people who could probably exercise?
Alternatively, perhaps wages should be equalized precisely because biology is unfair. But this seems to be an argument for reducing the salaries of all top athletes, who must enter the genetic lottery just to get on the field.
IIt might be easier to focus on distribution within society as a whole rather than on each individual industry, especially when basic biology is at stake. Sports competition has so effectively reversed wealth hierarchies racial, precisely because it ultimately depends on biology, leaving relatively little room for cultural bias to affect outcomes.
Unfortunately, biology has been less generous to women when it comes to strength and speed, making sports a poor venue for combating our larger social problem.
