Media Coverage
There is a stark difference in media coverage between men and women.
Source 1
There is not a big enough female presence in sports media. The focus is too much on men and their sports that no one really knows what is going on in female sports, regardless of if they are doing better than their male counterpart. Less coverage then leads to lower attendance to games because the public is unaware of the teams. This in turn leads to lower wages because of the lower attendance and the fact that companies will be less likely to pay as much for sponsors.
Source 1
The problem then in turn is not just the lack of coverage, but what the articles are about. According to the chart to the left from research done at Cambridge, the keywords between genders within the NCAA basketball articles are very different. The women keywords feature things like "married" or "pregnant" whereas the men's keywords feature "fastest", "strong", or "big". According to Sport Sociology Professor Mary Jo Kane from UNM, "Within the small amount of coverage that women’s athletics do receive, we find that female athletes are more likely to be portrayed off the court, out of uniform and in highly sexualized poses where the emphasis is on their femininity and their physical attractiveness rather than their athletic competence" (Source 2).