Women bowlers decry prize gender gap
Women bowlers decry prize gender gap
Moch. N. Kurniawan, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta
When women's bowler Wendy Chai of Malaysia won the Asian Bowling
Federation (ABF) Tournament of Champions here last week, she had
every reason to be proud about taking the season-ending
championships.
As she picked up her winner's check for US$10,000, she also
may have paused to think about what might have been.
For if she had triumphed in the men's event, Chai would have
taken home double the amount.
The prize-money gender gap grates on Indonesian women's bowler
Putty Armein and Malaysia's Shalin Zulkifli.
"Men's and women's bowlers play in the same lanes, use the
same ball and pins. It is a type of discrimination when the
women's winner only receives half the winner's prize of that of
the men," said the Indonesian number one.
She said the response of the ABF was dissatisfying; they told
her the prize money distribution was fair because there were more
men players than women.
And, she added, an official told her that male bowlers "fight
harder" than their female counterparts.
With such unreceptive responses, Putty was pessimistic the
prize structure would change soon, unless there was an increase
in the number of women bowlers.
Her hope is that the ABF will hold more "battle of the sexes"
tournaments, in which the purse is equal.
"If we had such a tournament more often, it would be good,"
she said.
Shalin, who has defeated men's bowlers in mixed competition,
concurred with Putty, but said change would take time.
"It is only to be expected if women's bowlers demand equal
prize winnings with men's bowlers."
The sports arena is no different from the workplace, where
women continue to lag behind men in the pay stakes. No woman
ranked in the 2004 Forbes list of the 50 highest paid athletes,
headed by F1 champion Michael Schumacher and golf's Tiger Woods,
who both made US$80 million.
The 50th highest paid athlete, basketball player Andre Miller,
made $15 million, compared to the top woman, Serena Williams,
with earnings of 10 million.
Part of the problem may be that women's sports lack the high-
paying team divisions of basketball, baseball and soccer, but
there is also the continuing feeling that a woman's effort
somehow does not measure up in dollars and cents.
Even in tennis, where player Billie Jean King made strides in
gaining equal pay in the early 1970s and women make more money
than in any other sport, two of the Grand Slams -- Wimbledon and
the French Open -- continue to provide less prize money to women.
The justification is that men play the best of five sets
instead of three for the women.
For bowling, a sport in which women can compete -- and win --
at the highest levels against male opponents, the pay difference
is hard to justify.
In 2001, the touring players of the Professional Women's
Bowling Association (PWBA) voted to boycott the U.S. Open due to
inequality in prize money and the broadcast time allocation in
the men's and women's events.
They accused the Bowling Proprietors Association of America
(BPAA) of reneging on its verbal commitment for equality for the
event. The men's purse was $350,000, compared to $187,500 for the
women.
Meanwhile, top Indonesian men's bowler Ryan Lalisang said he
would not mind prize money equality among the sexes.
"It might also be good if men's and women's bowlers could
compete against each other to win a single prize," he said.
ABF's honorary life president, Vivien Fung of Hong Kong, said
the federation recognized the issue of prize inequality, but the
current prize structure would not be altered because there were
more male competitors.
"I think that the present prize structure is acceptable until
the number of women's bowlers reach the same number of men's
bowlers."