Gender Wage Gaps in Random Sports

The problem with women's sports not being as well regarded is a perennial one, and certainly not one that is isolated to developing countries like India and Iran.  In a recent article on how the pandemic affected professional women's hockey, the author points out, "Professionally, there isn't a women's league in North America that pays players a living wage. ... From infrastructure to resources to promotion, the stage is far from even." 

In a regular year of hockey play, men are put up in 5-star hotels, but women get rooms at 4-star hotels; men get about 50% more free game tickets; men get 50% more locker room space; tournament rules for men calls for 300 journalists to cover the events, but the rules for women state that room need only be made for 100 journalists; championship games for the men are held in major metropolitan areas, while the women's are held in less populated cities; but more importantly, men get prize money, women do not.

This is all the result of organizers claiming that the difference in treatment is the higher level of public interest in men's sports, compared to women's, which drives the media interest.  This is really an example of the classic "chicken and egg" problem:  women's sports aren't broadcast because they don't seem to draw in viewers but there are no viewers because the women's sports aren't regularly broadcast.   Yet, even when so-called equal broadcast opportunities are given, the treatment of female athletes is depressingly uneven.  

It was only after one of the women playing in the NCAA March playoffs used social media to point out the severely lacking "weight room" that people started to notice the little things like the fact that when the women's games are broadcast, "March Madness" isn't on the floor of the court -- just "Women's Basketball".  When asked about it, all NCAA had to say was "it will continue listening to the expectations of members and women's basketball leadership while considering relations with 'valued broadcast partners'.”

In soccer (or, football as it's known in the rest of the world), the women's national team has won, since 1991, four World Cups and four Olympic gold medals; in the same time period, the men's team has... well... gotten into the quarter finals of a World Cup, once.  The highest the men's team has ever reached was 3rd.... in 1930.  Yet, the female players are paid much less than the males. Specifically, they're paid 38% of what the men are paid, but for doing a better job.  The difference can't be explained in ticket sales: "In 2016, the year after the World Cup, the women generated $1.9 million more than the men."  There is some evidence that merchandise featuring the women's team sells better than the men's.

The pay differential is even more evident between the NBA and the WNBA:  the men are paid 7 times more than the women.   "The average salary of a WNBA player as of 2017 was $75,000, whereas the average NBA salary is $30 million."  Comparing the share of revenue between the two organizations, half of the revenue generated in the NBA is paid to the players as salaries; whereas only 20% to 30% of the revenue generated by the WNBA is paid out as salaries to the female players.  In order to earn more -- sometimes 10 times more -- a lot of the WNBA players have to play in overseas leagues in the off season, which then limits the time they can spend promoting the sport in the US, leading to the likelihood of men like Draymond Green complaining the women aren't spending enough time (that they don't have) to promote their sport in order to get paid more.  What he's basically saying is that women should take the hit in pay in order to spend lots of unpaid time promoting the sport that may pay them more someday. 

As someone who growing up hearing that a girl should learn how to cook and clean to make her future husband happy, I say, oh hell no!  Paying me more will make me happy.

Lost in Random

Fans of "Lost" have lost their minds because the White House set the State of the Union speech for the same night as the premiere of Season 6 of the odd series. They have started a campaign to either get the Obama administration to change the date -- again -- for the speech, or get ABC to refuse to show the speech. After all, the other networks will be showing it, so why not instead broadcast a show that has absolutely no impact on anyone's life. Such fervent fandom brings to mind the uproar caused by the "Heidi" game of 1968.

It is not clear if the above information is something that should outrage the Political Science instructor in La Professora, or if it is merely confirmation of the belief that Americans are dangerously apathetic towards politics. The US Census Bureau reports that there are 225.5 million Americans who are eligible to vote -- 11.7 million between the ages of 18 and 20 -- yet only 64.9 percent of those bother to register to do so. Worse is the fact that 58.2 percent actually did vote in 2008. That means 94.3 million people who are eligible to vote don't bother registering and voting. Of the 18- through 20-year olds, in 2008 only 41% bothered to cast their ballot; meaning nearly 2 out of 3 college-aged citizens did not vote in an election that was supposed to energize the young in this country.

Suddenly, I needed to know just how inane are American preferences. Not only does a large number of the population choose not to exercise its most basic political right and participate in the electoral process, but a quick 'Google' of "Americans would rather" showed that Americans are a sorry lot.

When it comes to TV, the average -- no indication of which measure of central tendency this is -- American watches 15 hours of TV per week. One survey found that 80% of Americans can't live without their DVR. Another study showed that 26% would prefer to spend their evenings in front of the great glowing box. Hardly surprising given that American families spend $660 per year on TV, stereo, and gaming devices. That's just television; there's a plethora of other subjects that make one question the rationality of the American people.

Continuing on the theme of electronic devices. A survey done for Best Buy found that while 60% of those surveyed would choose to give up alcohol for (only) a week rather than to give up their cell phone, 15% would endure having their teeth drilled if it meant keeping their cellphone. A more surprising study found that 46 percent of woman and 30 percent of men would give up sex for two weeks in exchange for keeping during that same time period their access to the Internet. TV fares worse than sex; 61% of women said they'd give up their TV for two weeks for just one week's worth of Internet access.

Yet iPods fare much better; a study done found that 60% of Americans would refuse to give up their magic little Apples even if they knew that it was damaging the environment. That same study showed that only 6 percent would be willing to give up their car, and 7 percent would dump their computer. Cell phones, however, are more quickly abandoned: 21 percent of Americans would forgo the fun of being on an electronic leash if they knew that the device was harming the environment.

Furthermore, the survey found, given the choice between convenience, comfort, or protecting the environment, convenience and comfort were almost tied -- 38 and 36 percent respectively -- while only 26 percent of those questioned would choose protecting the environment. Which, one supposes, is better than none at all. Sadly, a look at the cost / benefit analysis done by Americans shows that their utility bill would have to increase by $129 per month -- $1,500 per year -- before they would motivated to put in the effort to make their homes energy efficient. Which seems odd, given that 45% of those asked would rather pay bills than scrub clean their shower.

One study found that Americans throw out 40 percent of all the food produced in this country. Granted, some of that waste is at the manufacturing stage and the point of sale, but the majority of the waste is from people throwing out that left over Chinese take out they never got around to eating. What that means is, while 6.7 million people are "food insecure" -- a fancy way of saying 'hungry' -- $48.3 billion worth of food is taken to the dump each year. Wasted food wastes other resources as well; 25% of the country's fresh water consumption and 4% of oil consumption is squandered along with that food.

The people of this country spent more money on bottled water in one year than they did on iPods and movie tickets. I have already ranted on the stupidity of bottled water, so it should come as no surprise that the fact that $15 billion was spent in one year by Americans on something that is basically free continues to boggle the mind.

With all the hoopla about health care reform and H1N1 in the news the last few months, one would be forgiven for thinking that the American people are concerned with their health. Sadly, this does not seem to be the case. One quarter of all Americans do not engage in any form of exercise; this matters as some $76 billion in 2000 is was spent on health care for the inactive. Far more scarier is the 51% of people who said they would get on a plane even if they knew they were sick with the flu.

Then there's the weight of Americans. Given their choice, Americans would rather live someplace where there are more McDonald's than there are Starbucks. It is clear that Americans love their fast food. Even in state such as California, the proportion of overweight people is staggering: 42% of women and 63% of men are fat. Nationwide, 31 percent of all adults are morbidly obese. Given the choice between losing 75 pounds or losing their job, well over half of the population chose shedding the weight. Even more chose being thin and poor over being a fat Croesus. However, when given the dilemma of having the perfect body or the perfect mind, only 5 to 7 percent (women and men, respectively) would choose to shed 20 IQ points along with their unwanted weight -- yet another 11 to 17 percent said they would certainly consider it. Additionally, 60% said that they'd rather reduce the likelihood by twenty percent of having their identity stolen than lose twenty pounds.

The country is not without its hypocrisy, however. When surveyed on volunteerism, 93% said that it is important to promote volunteer activities. Yet less that half donate any of their time to charitable organizations. In fact, 51 percent said they would rather spend their time watching television or visiting their in-laws than volunteer; all the while saying that the greatest barrier to volunteering is the lack of time.

It is not just the citizens who are lazy. Politicians are truly representing the constituents. When a news organization asked members of Congress if they were planning on reading the text of the health care reform bill before voting, many of them said they were not. It is no wonder then that 45% of voters believe that a group of people randomly chosen from a phone book would do a better job at running the country than the elected officials.

Let us face the fact that Americans do fit, in the most general sense, the stereotype of fat, lazy, and uninformed. No wonder the "Lost" fanboys have their panties in a twist over having their prized season premiere -- the sixth one, nonetheless -- bumped for something like the president laying out his plan for governing the country in coming year. Politics, after all, requires too much thought. If Americans really thought about what is being done in Washington, they'd know better than to think that 24% of the national budget is allocated to NASA -- the correct answer, by the way, is that a mere 0.58% is spent on NASA projects. And far fewer than the current 58% would believe that 'aggressive interrogation techniques' are necessary for gaining information from Umar Abdulmutallab, the "underwear bomber".

Sad as all this is, 90% of Americans would rather live here than anywhere else in the world. That's the highest for any of the 24 countries studied. I have to wonder if the other 10% are the "Lost" fans who would rather live elsewhere if it meant they got their precious show on the day promised.

Civil Randomness

Yesterday, I participated in a panel of professors discussing various aspects of Terrorism. Each of us had been given a question to prepare in advance and 15 minutes to present our answers. The question for me was “What is the threat to civil liberties in the War against Terrorism?”

As much as it grieved me to be quoting Justice Rehnquist, he had made a good point: Democracy is a fine balance between freedom and order, and in times of war, Americans have traditionally chosen to have more order than freedom. The trouble now lies in the question of whether or not the “war” on terrorism counts as one of those times.

The thrust of my talk was that civil liberties are each individual’s responsibility to defend. If one fears the government taking away one’s liberties, then one should exercise one’s political power and vote. Yes, vote. With only 19% of the college-age citizens voting, it is hardly fitting that those other 81% complain that the government is trying to restrict their rights.

The Fourth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution states quite clearly that the people have the right to be secure in their persons, houses, papers and effects. However, the Supreme Court, when ruling on whether that right extends to the public interaction, has consistently said that if a person has no expectation of privacy, then the 4th Amendment does not come into play.

Furthermore, the 4th Amendment is not applied to business when it comes to the collecting of personal information. That’s not to say that stealing is perfectly acceptable when done by businesses; stealing is stealing, and is punishable by law. It is not, however, a violation of the Constitution.

What is being discussed here is the collection of data on people’s purchasing habits and other bits of personal information. If you have in your wallet a credit card, a store “loyalty” card, or any other card for which you filled out an application form with your personal data, then a business has your personal information. That business can then sell your information to others.

If you have a MySpace, FaceBook, or any of the numerous other Internet blog-like pages, then you have been giving out free information. Employers are known to surf those sites for information about prospective, and current, employees. Think carefully about what your pages say about you.

I have often been amazed at the conversations I have overheard walking down the street in the vicinity of someone chatting on a cell phone. It is as if T.M.I. Chatter believes there’s some sort of cone of silence and no one can tell that Mr/s Chatter is discussing the most intimate of details. Sorry, there’s no such cone and we really can hear everything. I do mean everything, even the parts most of us would be happier not knowing.

It seems incredible, then, that citizens are complaining of the government wanting to collect the data that they are so wantonly giving away.

The Fifth Amendment only says that the government cannot compel you to give up information that may incriminate you. It does not say that the government can’t collect any information about you at all. If businesses can trade in personal information, if all of your cyber-friends can know every last detail about your life, if you blather loudly on your cell phone on a public street, you do not have an expectation of privacy, and thus should not be concerned about the government collecting your data.

What this has to do with terrorism is simple. To protect the country from those who wish to harm it from within, citizens expect their government, at all levels, to provide security. In order to make the country secure, the government has to know what is going on within the country. Data mining seems the best and easiest way to go about it.

Despite what Hollywood has fed us over the decades, terrorists are not evil geniuses. They have not figured out how to exist outside modern society and the reach of all its technology. If Barnes and Nobles can know what reading materials terrorists have purchased by tracking that information on their B&N membership card, if Visa can know what reading materials terrorists purchased at Barnes and Noble using that credit card, it should surprise no one that the U.S. government would also like to know.

In the continuing effort to keep terrorists from flying, the government has a “no fly” list of suspects, or, if you’d like, persons of interest. If your name is on the list because you are unlucky enough to share that name with someone else out there in the world who is of interest to the U.S. government, life is about to become simpler: soon, when you purchase a airline ticket, you will be asked for your birthdate. If you don’t want to share that information, do not be surprised that you will have difficulty getting through security at the airport. Furthermore, this data – your name, birthdate, and flight information – will be shared with the U.S. government. If you don’t want it to know, don’t fly; I hear the train is a lovely way to see the country, even if it is usually late.

As for me, I am La Professora; I know how to keep my technological profile low and my personal information private.

A Loan of Randomness

By now, everyone has read or heard about the subprime mortgage crisis and its effect on the markets. Even those with the meanest of logic skills can figure out that it will affect our -- if not the global -- economy. Reports of doom and gloom abound. Yet one industry is seeing a bright side to the crisis. This industry is hopping right up to serve those debtors who are awash in debt and need to make payments on their mortgages or lose their homes. This magnanimous industry is none other than Credit Card Companies.

Visa, MasterCard, and American Express want you to know that the best way to get out your current debt crisis is to, well, go further into debt.

If you haven't been all that good at making payments on your debts, be they student loans or your phone bill, your credit report shows you to be a subprime customer, meaning that there's a higher risk that you won't be all that good at paying off any new debt you may accrue. Logic then dictates that those companies offering credit cards would avoid offering debtors like you an opportunity to owe them money. Logic doesn't seem to be Visa and MasterCard's strong point, especially given the factoids that nation-wide 1 in 5 mortgages are over 60 days in arrears -- that's 20% -- and 1 in 20 homes are now in foreclosure. Hardly a market for extending more debt; yet, compared to last year, the number of credit card offers mail directly to subprime loan holders rose 41%. At the same time, folks with good credit ratings saw 13% fewer offers.

Business analysts of all stripes agree on at least one thing: We Americans are far too dependent on debt, to the point our personal deficit rivals the government's. A Federal Reserve survey on consumer finances showed that 43% of families are spending more than they are earning each month. For those who like to see hard numbers, that means for every $100 dollars in the paycheck, the average American spends $122.

Wait, that's average and anyone worth their weight in methodology homework grades ought to know that there are three different ways of measuring "average". Here, the average given is the mean, rather than the median or the mode. What this should say is that there is some good news in the world of debt, and there is: A quarter of American households do not have credit cards; 40% of credit card bills are paid off each month and only 3% are past due by 30+ days. Only 8.3% of credit card holders owe more than $9,000. The median debt on credit cards is actually only about $2,200, which in itself is mean figure. Gender seems to play a role as to how much debt one carries: Males have an average of $2,369; females average $2,289. Or perhaps it is one's marital status: Married people have an average of $2,625 of credit card debt while non-married individuals have an average of $1,744. Then again, it could be region: People in the West are further into debt than any other region, at $2,547; people in the Midwest are the most frugal with an average of only $1,972 in credit card debt.

On the other hand, the news isn't all good. The total American consumer debt in 2004 was $1.9773 trillion, which was up 41% from 1998. It's very easy to see how we consumers went so far into debt when one looks at the figures:

The number of cards in the average wallet: 7.6 -- 2.7 bank credit cards, 3.8 retailer cards and 1.1 debit cards.

Those 7.6 cards are used to make 24% of our everyday purchases.

Most of the purchases using credit cards are considered survivor debt, charges to pay the bills. The old joke "Using Visa to pay MasterCard" isn't funny anymore.

Roughly $125 billion of American household expenses are put on credit cards. That number goes up each year.

The minimum monthly payment is now 4% of the balance, and that only went up because the government Office of the Comptroller of the Currency pressured credit card companies to raise it. Even with the new minimum, a debt of $8,000, at 18% interest will take roughly 25 years to pay off and the total bill will be $24,000 -- 300% of the original debt.

Consumer spending amounts to about two-thirds of the U.S. economy, thus the reason why the Bush administration said, after 9/11, it was our patriotic duty to go shopping.

Car loans make up 63% of the consumer debt, and if we don't by cars, Detroit will have to fire folks on the assembly line.

The job growth rate -- the rate at which jobs are added to the economy -- has been the slowest since 2003 and that means fewer people are able to get better jobs with higher wages to pay down their debt.

Wages are going down for folks with a B.A. degree, yet student loan debt is going up: in 2004 -- and we can safely say these figures have gone up since then -- 60% of students graduating from a public university had an average loan debt of $17,600. Last year, the interest rate on a Stafford loan went up 1.5%. PLUS loans are expected to increase 2.4 points to 8.5% by the time most of my students graduate and start paying off their loans. Private loans could rise to at least 12 percent. With tuition/education fees rising faster than inflation, student loans will be an even greater burden on an already cash strapped society.

The average American socks away in a savings account about 1.3% of their disposable income. To save adequately for emergencies and future expenses such as retirement, it is recommended that people save at least 10% of their income.

In 1999, the first year the IRS allowed taxpayers to use credit cards to pay their income tax, 53,300 people put their taxes on plastic. By 2003, that number rose to 313,000 people. Oftentimes, people complain about how much the government "steals" from them; yet, they seem to not care that their credit card companies are financially raping them for the privilege of using plastic to pay the tax bill.

By the way, that near two trillion dollar consumer debt doesn't include mortgages. While consumer debt averages out to be $18,654, the national average mortgage debt is $69,227 -- $102,264 if you live in the West -- thus the average household, factoring in a mortgage, two student loans, and at least one credit card, owes roughly $112,000.

The whole subprime loan crisis has become a political issue in the campaign season. Questions of what to do about it are being raised. Some want the government to step in and save debtors from the evil loan companies who sold them loans that they clearly couldn't afford.

Let's think about this for a moment. You're offered an interest-only loan that clearly will result in larger payments down the line when payments on the principle kick in and you can only afford the interest payments now; that's a sure signal that you should not sign up for the loan, no matter how hot the housing market is. A house is not an investment that can be bought and sold like an NYSE offering; it is a place to live and grow.

My answer to the folks who cry that we must protect them, that they were taken advantaged of by the loan sharks in Brookes Brothers suits, is that they knew what they were getting into and do not deserve my taxmoney to assist them out of debt. When one million homeowners are carrying more than three mortgages and 1.8 million have loans totaling more than 100% of the value of their homes, it's clear that those people aren't willing to learn to live within their financial limitations. If we allow the government to bail them out, the lesson that will be learnt is this: make stupid decisions, go far into debt, ruin the economy, but don't worry, the piper will be paid by those of us who did not.

On the other hand, MasterCard is making you an offer you can't refuse. After all, Keith Leggett, senior economist at the American Bankers Association, tell us "Consumers should be grateful that we have a very competitive market."