Our thanks to Jeff for this piece by two female BBC journalists. Why does it so often take two women to do the work of one man? When I was a schoolboy 40+ years ago, most teachers were men, and there was no need for Teaching Assistants. Since the time that most teachers were women, Teaching Assistants have been required – and needless to say, that line of work is close to being a female monopoly. I digress.

From the article:

Ivan Peter Khodabakhsh, chief executive of the Ladies European (golf) Tour, said he was still striving for parity in prize money.

“We are extremely proud of the significant strides which have been made in redressing the gender imbalance in prize money across the whole of sport over the last three years,” he told BBC Sport.

“Knowing the reality in the market, however, I would question that 80% of sports have equal prize money. We believe there is still a significant gap between the treatment of men’s and women’s events. More needs to be done from a social perspective to improve the perception of women’s sport and the financial rewards.” [J4MB: WHY does more need to be done?]…

European Solheim Cup captain Annika Sorenstam said women’s golf was “doing a good job” but that players would continue to “work hard” to address the disparity.

She added: “Sport is a mirror of the business world. [J4MB: No, it’s not. What an eye-wateringly stupid comparison.] Unfortunately a lot of women in the business world don’t always get paid the same as a man in the same role. [J4MB: No evidence is provided to back this assertion, possibly because it’s baseless.] We just have to continue to fight for it and hope they pay by performance and not by gender.” [J4MB: Payment by performance in sport would inevitably mean paying women less.]

She also stressed it was important to consider the impact of sponsorship, which can be higher in men’s sport because it features more prominently on television. [J4MB: It features more prominently on television because it’s more exciting and watchable, and therefore draws higher audiences, and in turn higher sponsorship money. What does Ms Sorenstam imagine will happen when people ‘consider the impact of sponsorship’?]…

England’s former world squash number one Laura Massaro has benefited from squash’s decision to reward male and female players equally from this year and said sports women should be vocal in their fight for equality.

“It frustrated me that we played the same number of games [J4MB: So Ms Massaro would agree that in tennis, where women play fewer games than men, they should get lesser prize money? Ha.] and put in the same amount of training and effort as the men but because we may have been perceived as playing at a slightly lower level to the men [J4MB: Ms Massaro is clearly preparing for a future career as a stand-up comedienne] we weren’t paid the same,” the 33-year-old told BBC Sport.