Just how much is a female athlete worth?

If you are unsure as to whether gender inequality still exists, I assure you it does. Here are some sports-related examples:

Prize winnings: At the 2013 US Open, Inbee Park won the women's title and $585,000. Justin Rose won the men's title, and a prize of $1.4 million.

Salaries: Based on the 2013 CBA, athletes in the WNBA have salaries ranging from a minimum of $37,950 to a max of $107,000 depending on years of service. The maximum a WNBA team can spend on player salaries is $913,000. Based on the NBA's 2011 CBA, male athletes earn minimum salaries between $473,604 and $1.35 million based on service years, and teams are capped at over $58 million for 2012-2013. Note that $1.35 million is a minimum salary in the NBA.

Publicity and Endorsements: According to research at the University of Minnesota Tucker Center, "women's sports receive only 4% of all sport media coverage...". It follows that with less publicity, female athletes also receive fewer and less lucrative endorsements. Additionally, in this area particularly, female athletes who prove themselves as top performers are also judged on their physical appearance. Women must be both successful and hot (I'll allow that sometimes success isn't necessary, but that won't add much in a positive way to this post).

I understand why some people make the argument that female athletes are paid less because no one watches women's sports. But I believe that at the very least, those people are short-sighted. They must not see the endless circle: low pay because low publicity, low publicity because no one watches, no one watches because fewer endorsements, fewer endorsements because low publicity... and round we go.

Categorizing this as a "women's issue" carries both social and economic risks. First, there's the problem that if girls aren't engaged in certain areas - a popular example is STEM fields, but I'll argue that all fields are important including athletics - they end up being underrepresented as women and that hurts everyone. And with child obesity on the rise, active & healthy girls are both happier citizens and cheaper for tax payers (that one's for the cynics out there), both in childhood and adulthood.

Finally, consider this:
In the US, the median salary for women in full-time jobs in 2012 was $37,391. Women make up approximately 50% of the US population, and according to the Tucker Institute, 40% of all sports participants are female. Even if you assume a very small number of women participating in sports are also full-time salary earners, that's a lot of women and a lot of revenue to be tossing away.

The issue of gender inequality is nothing new, and I won't pretend that I've said anything outrageously inventive or that I have said it better than many of the athletes and brands that I love have already done. But let's keep the discussion going. For my part, I've been watching a lot of LPGA on the Golf Channel lately, and I promise you it is at least as interesting to me as the PGA. Take that for what you will.