Women Warriors
By Robert Daveant
4 July 2008
Professional athletes are distinguished from amateur athletes by virtue of being paid. Throughout the world, most top female athletes are not paid, and work full-time or part-time jobs, in addition to their training, practice and competition schedules. Women's professional sports organizations defy this trend. Such organizations are relatively new, and are most common in very economically developed countries, where investors are available to buy teams, and businesses can afford to sponsor them in exchange for publicity and promotion of their products.
Starting in the late 1960s, a few women gained enough recognition for their athletic talent and social acceptance as role models to earn a living playing sports. Most of these were in the United States. Among them was Joan Weston, a roller derby star who was once the highest paid female in sports, but she was the exception rather than the rule.
Things started to change in 1973 when tennis star Billy Jean King won "the Battle of the Sexes" and cracked the glass ceiling on pay for female athletes. Other players, like Martina Navratilova, broke through that ceiling, decreasing the gap between women and men athlete's pay on a regular basis rather than occasionally.
Even today, in the 21st century, most professional women athletes around the world receive very little notice or compensation compared to men. Life magazine acknowledged the importance of King's achievement in 1990 by naming her one of the "100 Most Important Americans of the 20th Century."
Although women have been pro athletes in the United States, since the early 1900s, paid teams, leagues and athletes are still uncommon and, as of 2006, paid far less than their male counterparts. For instance, the WNBA had its first season in 1997, 51 years after inception of the men's NBA. The WNBA pays the top women players 60 times less than the top men.
In 2005, the WNBA team salary cap was $0.673 million. The men's NBA cap was over 60 times higher, at $43.87 million. The WUSA became the first American women's pro soccer league in 2001, but lasted only briefly because of financial sponsorship. Fans enjoyed women's pro soccer for three seasons before executives announced suspension of the league, in spite of the fact that the US Soccer WNT was rated one of the world's top teams. Absence of a Women's professional soccer league in the United States now makes it difficult for the Soccer WNT to find new players who are ready for international competition. A 2004 effort to revive the WUSA was launched. On September 4, 2007, a new North American women's professional soccer league, tentatively named Women's Soccer LLC, was announced.
The Nation Women's Football Accociation
The NWFA was formed in August, 2000. It was time for women to have the chance to play full contact football in a well organized and professionally run league. Starting with two teams, Nashville and Alabama the league held a pre-season showcase of six games. This pre-season ran from October 14,2000 until December 2, 2000. Between January and March of 2001, another 8 teams were added bringing the total of teams for the 2001 season to 10. Another 11 teams were added for the next season bringing the total of teams for the 2002 season to 21. In 2003 the NWFA added another 8 teams bringing the total number of teams competing to 29. In 2004, the league fielded 37 teams for the season. The league has also been the subject of many feature stories and articles in more than 250 major publications and TV networks including the The Tonight Show with Jay Leno, CBS Evening News, The NBC Today Show, The New York Times, Nickelodeon, The Boston Globe, The Washington Post and many, many local and regional networks and publications.
The league's website had over 3.5 million hits in April of 2003. I photographed the Cleveland Fusion team for two seasons, my daughter Emily joined me on the sidelines for every home game. Sad to say, none of the Cleveland Fusion players were paid, even though this is a professonal league, they play for the love of the sport - hopefully one day, maybe when my daughter Emily plays, this will change.
Currently my daughter Emily is 12 years old, she runs track and throws shotput in the spring on a girls team, plays baseball with the boys in the summer, puts on her pads for football in the fall with the guys once again and rounds out the year by playing basketball in the winter with the girls. She no longer competes in Taekwondo, but at best was ranked third in the nation in sparring during her second trip to the nationals in Orlando Florida.
