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Thursday, May 17, 2018
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
OPINION

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W

omen 
have 
faced 
inequality for as long 
as we have had written 
history – especially when it comes to 
female athletes. Today, players on the 
U.S. Women’s Soccer Team – the No. 
1 women’s soccer team in the world 
– get paid “as little as 40%” of those 
on the U.S. Men’s Soccer Team. The 
pay gap between male and female 
athletes is glaringly obvious and 
largely unjustified. In fact, it is often 
overwhelming.
Furthermore, there is little to 
no representation of women on 
the governing bodies of sports 
organizations and previous attempts 
to 
achieve 
this 
representation 
have failed. In fact, only 18 percent 
of board members were women 
across the 28 international sports 
federations, and this percentage 
has been static from 2014 to 2016. 
If women can’t even get onto the 
boards of these organizations, how 
can we expect any change?
Even the executives at FIFA admit 
we shouldn’t be holding our breath 
for equality; a former FIFA secretary 
general for the organization stated 
it might be “another 23 World Cups 
before potentially women should 
receive the same amount (of prize 
money) as men.” This pay gap will 
not close, and if it does, it will do so 
very slowly. This means another 
100 years until female athletes can 
expect to be treated as equals to their 
male counterparts. It asks women to 
wait 100 more years to receive equal 
compensation when they often have 
to outperform men by a huge margin 
just to gain any kind of respect. If 

these organizations continue to 
remain ignorant of this pressing 
issue and fail to address it, female 
athletes will never be able to close the 
pay gap. Action needs to begin at the 
top, and that means acknowledging 
the issue, allowing women to speak 
about it and implementing real policy 
change.
At all levels of sport, male athletes 
are held in a higher regard than 
female athletes. Because of this, 
it becomes much more difficult to 
achieve equality. Speaking from 
personal experience, I can say the 
men’s teams always get priority. 
In high school, they got the most 
qualified coaches, the earlier practice 
time and more money to pay for gear. 
The athletic director of the school 
advertised men’s games and not 
women’s games. Our administrators 
and teachers showed up to the men’s 
games and not the women’s games. 
As a result, students followed suit.
In 
collegiate 
athletics, 
this 
systematic inequity is most easily 
seen in ticket prices. This study 
shows men’s teams are thought to 
be better simply because tickets 
to their games cost more due to 
the assumption that the price of a 
product reflects its value. This issue 
can be costly in terms of public 
perception of women’s sports. The 
public needs to understand female 
athletes are just as valuable as male 
athletes, but different ticket pricing 
perpetuates the public’s perception 
that men’s sports are more valuable. 
At the University of Michigan, 
season tickets for men’s basketball 
cost $175; season tickets for women’s 

basketball cost $45. Both teams were 
ranked in the top 25 throughout the 
season, both teams made the NCAA 
tournament, both teams play in the 
Big Ten and both teams play at Crisler 
Center. Despite the similarities 
in merit, location and schedule, 
the women’s team had an average 
attendance of 2,672 people per game 
while the men’s team had an average 
attendance of 11,121 people per game. 
The public, a.k.a. the consumers, 
need to know female athletics are 
just as important as male athletics. 
Without this understanding, the 
sports world will continue to justify 
the pay gap and other inequalities.
College athletes, both male and 
female, put in a lot of time playing 
their sport. It is disappointing to 
know despite equal amounts of 
hours of work, one team is valued 
more by the University and therefore 
its students. It is important that 
inequality is stopped in its early 
stages, and perhaps the University 
can set an example for other colleges 
and universities around the nation 
by starting to level the playing field 
for our young female athletes. They 
work just as hard and are just as 
talented; in fact, Katelynn Flaherty 
became the all-time leading scorer 
for Michigan basketball – male or 
female – this year. With that kind 
of talent should come equal respect, 
and that should be reflected in ticket 
prices, advertising and support from 
the University as a whole. 

ETHAN KESSLER | COLUMN

 EMMA CHANG
Editorial Page Editor
EMMA RICHTER
Managing Editor

Emma Chang
Joel Danilewitz
Samantha Goldstein
Elena Hubbell
Emily Huhman
Tara Jayaram

Jeremy Kaplan
Sarah Khan
Magdalena Mihaylova
Ellery Rosenzweig
Jason Rowland

Anu Roy-Chaudhury
Alex Satola
Ali Safawi
 Ashley Zhang
Sam Weinberger

Unsigned editorials reflect the official position of the Daily’s Editorial Board. 
All other signed articles and illustrations represent solely the views of their authors.

ASIF BECHER
Editor in Chief

EDITORIAL BOARD MEMBERS

MARLEE BURRIDGE | COLUMN

The pay gap in women’s sports

Julia Montag can be reached at 

jtmon@umich.edu.

Careening Towards Uncertainty
L

ast Tuesday afternoon 
marked the beginning 
of 
a 
new 
chapter 
for 
America’s 
Middle 
East 
policy. Ahead of the official 
May 12th deadline, President 
Trump announced his refusal 
to recertify sanctions relief 
for Iran, thereby 
withdrawing 
the 
U.S. 
from 
the 
landmark 
2015 
Iran nuclear deal.
By no measure 
was 
the 
Iran 
nuclear 
deal, 
known 
officially 
as 
the 
Joint 
Comprehensive 
Plan 
of 
Action, 
JCPOA, 
perfect. 
Certain 
aspects 
and 
provisions 
of the deal have 
no doubt proved 
contrary to the interests of 
Israel and the U.S. However, 
Trump’s 
dismissal 
of 
the 
deal 
without 
an 
apparent 
replacement 
or 
follow-up 
plan, 
in 
keeping 
with 
his 
characteristically shortsighted 
style, leaves America’s policy 
towards Iran in a troubling 
state of uncertainty.
The deal, although derided as 
a temporary fix to a permanent 
problem, 
addressed 
several 
components of Iran’s budding 
nuclear program which was 
ostensibly for energy purposes 
only but was agreed upon to 
be military in nature by the 
international 
community. 
All of these comprehensive 
limitations 
were 
enforced 
through mandatory inspections 
by the United Nations’ nuclear 
arm, the International Atomic 
Energy Agency, IAEA. 
In exchange for hobbling 
its 
nuclear 
abilities, 
Iran 
would 
be 
relieved 
of 
the 
crippling economic sanctions 
that had followed its nuclear 
development since 2006, which 
had cost it hundreds of billions 
of dollars by isolating it from 
global financial markets and 
limiting its oil exports. The 
provisions of the deal, laid out 
in ten and 15-year segments, 
allowed 
for 
longer-term 
arrangements to be made in the 
interim, which could address 
the larger issue of Iranian 
nuclear capability.
The 
lack 
of 
permanence 
within 
the 
deal 
was 
only 

natural, 
as 
Iran’s 
extant 
nuclear knowledge can never 
be destroyed, nor can it legally 
be denied the right to carry out 
nuclear activity for peaceful 
means. Iran’s regime clearly 
deemed 
the 
possession 
of 
nuclear 
weapons 
beneficial 
to its foreign 
policy 
goals 
before 
the 
deal, and the 
JCPOA 
did 
what it could 
by successfully 
presenting 
sanctions relief 
as a worthwhile 
tradeoff 
in 
the 
short-
term. Where 
the 
JCPOA 
most 
notably 
faltered, 
however, 
was in the lack of concern it 
demonstrated regarding Israel. 
 
As Iran has collected the 
windfalls 
of 
the 
JCPOA’s 
sanctions relief, it has spent 
billions 
to 
arm 
Hezbollah 
and other Shiite militias in 
Lebanon and Syria, as has 
been adamantly expressed by 
Israel. The use of sanctions 
relief by Tehran to fund proxy 
wars against Israeli interests 
has 
led 
to 
unprecedented 
levels of conflict in the region, 
weakening ties between the 
U.S. and our strongest Middle 
Eastern ally.
Trump’s 
decision 
to 
withdraw 
from 
the 
deal, 
however, was most likely not 
the result of a comprehensive 
and balanced assessment. Since 
his 
presidential 
campaign, 
Trump has maintained the 
deal’s nefarious one-sidedness. 
Additionally, withdrawal from 
the JCPOA is consistent with 
Trump’s 
persistent 
hostility 
towards both Obama’s legacy 
and multilateral deals that 
have taken the place of a more 
traditional emphasis on policy.
The 
long-term 
ambitions 
present in the U.S. withdrawal 
are, instead, represented by 
national-security 
advisor 
John Bolton and Secretary of 
State Mike Pompeo. Bolton’s 
hawkish propensity for regime 

Continue reading on page 5.

“Since his 
presidential 
campaign, 
Trump has 
maintained the 
deal’s nefarious 
one-sidedness.”

