Perspective: Do women deserve equal pay? Examining the outcry from the Ballito Pro juniors prize money

The controversy over the difference in the prize money for the male and female winners of the Billabong Junior Series competition last week brought the hot topic of gender discrimination and the pay gap squarely to the fore on local shores.

Rio Waida from Indonesia received R8 000, while the female winner South Africa’s own Zoe Steyn received exactly half that amount.

After a photo of the winners was shared on the Ballito Pro Facebook page, negative reactions poured in, with people accusing the competition of “archaic discrimination” and “blatant inequality”.

The photo went viral (it was shared thousands of times), with newspapers in Australia, Britain and the US reporting on the outcry.

I don’t believe the organisers nor the World Surf League intended to discriminate and certainly their explanations made some sense.

The WSL argument comes down to the concept of prize-money-per-surfer, which it says shows the equality of pay between male and female competitors.

It works like this: if there are 10 surfers competing for a total pot of R100 in prize money it works out to a ratio of R10-per-surfer.

The winner gets R50, and the runners up get the rest. Now if only five female surfers compete, at the same ratio of R10-per-surfer, the total prize money is R50. The winner gets only R25.

That was the case at the Ballito Pro, the WSL said.

There were twice as many male surfers as female ones: 36 compared to 18.

To keep the same money-per-surfer ratio for men and women, the prize money for the female winner had to be half as much as the men.

But none of that really matters.

What is at stake here is that unequal prize money sends the message (whether intentional or not) that we as a society value men above women.

The response was so violently negative because the fight for gender equality is a very real one that is being played out in all corners of the globe, from the sports field to the boardroom and even in the bedroom.

Tennis faced a similar situation a few years ago when the tide of public opinion forced a rethink on prize money equality.

Venus Williams was very outspoken in her opinion on the matter and was one of the driving forces behind the change.

At Wimbledon, one of the oldest and most prestigious tournaments in the sport’s history, women had competed for less ever since they first took part in 1880.

The fall-out for the tournament was huge and in 2007 the organisers finally bowed to public pressure to make things equal.

Common to most sports where the same debate rages are the arguments that women attract smaller crowds, generate less money for the sport, and their physical make-up (i.e not as strong as men) makes for less of a performance (in tennis women play best of three sets as apposed to five in Grand Slams).

There are too many factors to unpack them all here, but for a start let’s ask ourselves why women attract smaller crowds?

Instead of taking to Facebook to share your views on the subject, what about actually attending women’s sporting events?

Even watching them on TV. Our female representatives who are bravely blazing a trail in male-dominated arenas need support.

Then there’s the physical and performance differences.

OK so surprise, surprise, women and men are different. On the whole men can run faster, climb higher and smack a ball further. Big whoop.

Sport is not only about brawn, brains and strategy are important too.

The same could be said about life. The physical differences make growing babies possible (not a sport exactly but certainly a marathon event!) and are appreciated in surprising ways.

My three-year-old son has told us emphatically that he prefers putting his head on my lap at bedtime because my lap is softer. What can I say, I have more ‘natural cushioning’ than Pieter.

Men and women are different in thousands of ways that both frustrate and delight us.

Quite frankly I would not want us to be the same. We are different but of equal value.

From a Christian perspective men and women are created in the image of God, in other words to accurately represent the perfection of God you need both a man and a woman.

But God’s design is seldom recognised.

The global campaign to change that needs the support of the largely male dominated sporting world.

Get with the times. Reflect equal respect for the sexes with equal prize money.

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