Australia's top female sports stars "struggle to attract liveable wages and earn a pittance compared to their male counterparts," a report highlighting the size of the gender pay gap in sport found, according to Rebecca Urban of THE AUSTRALIAN. Australia’s top female cricketers earn a retainer of between A$40,000 ($30,000) and A$65,000 ($49,000) a year -- 4-7% of their male counterparts’ six-figure offering, calculated at A$900,000 ($677,000), the report found. And despite "last year’s hard-won pay deal," players representing the national women’s football team, the Matildas, receive a base pay of just A$30,000-A$41,000 ($22,600-$30,800) -- "about half of Australia’s average full-time salary" of almost A$79,000 ($59,400). Claire Braund, the co-author of Women on Board’s Gender Balance in Global Sport Report, said the general view was that the pay gap "was an unavoidable byproduct of the commercial nature of sport," where broadcasting deals and advertising dollars drove athletes' salaries. She said that the gap was "largely a legacy of the past invisibility of women’s sport," and improved media coverage and smart advertisers attuned to the opportunity women’s sport presented "were challenging the status quo." She pointed to the Ten Network’s decision to broadcast the Women’s Big Bash League during prime time and the recent AFL women’s clash between the Western Bulldogs and Melbourne, which attracted more than 1 million viewers. Braund: "This just shows that when you give the same resources to broadcast women's sport and don’t hide it away in a different timeslot or relegate it to a crappy ground with poor lighting, people want to watch it" (THE AUSTRALIAN, 9/16).
