- For all of the excitement and celebrity, professional female athletes still lag well behind their male counterparts in terms of how much they earn, the power they wield in their profession, and the respect afforded to them.

Today's guest shows that this phenomenon in sports is no different from the experience of women across American society.

She's Macaela Mackenzie, this week on "Story in the Public Square."

(uplifting music) (uplifting music continues) Hello and welcome to "Story in the Public Square," where storytelling meets public affairs.

I'm Jim Ludes from The Pell Center at Salve Regina University.

- And I'm G. Wayne Miller, also with Salve's Pell Center.

- Our guest this week is Macaela Mackenzie, an accomplished journalist and former senior editor at Glamour.

She's also the author of "Money, Power, Respect: How Women in Sports Are Shaping the Future of Feminism."

She joins us today from Connecticut.

Macaela, it's great to be with you today.

- Great to be with you both.

Thanks for having me.

- So I mentioned to you that this book, I finished this book and I was fired up in a way that my wife was frankly a little bit concerned about, but the book is really tremendous.

It is really a tour of the power of sport, but also the challenges to women in sport that we're gonna talk about at length.

But let's start with sport itself.

What is the power of sports in American public life today?

- Yeah, that's a great question and it's really at the heart of the book.

So as I started reporting on women's sports at Glamour, one thing that really started to become apparent to me was that sports aren't just a way to kind of reflect our cultural attitudes.

They actually actively help to shape them.

So it's this literal arena where we get to see women achieve and we get to see these incredible performances.

And we also get this very sort of transparent look at how women are paid and valued, which we don't necessarily get window into into other industries.

So, yeah, I think sports aren't just sort of this way to easily talk about the pay gap and the investment gap and the motherhood penalty and all these things that are playing out in other industries.

They're actually a way that we can work to change them more broadly.

- And so, and so I guess from there, what was the actual genesis of the book?

- Yeah, so I had started covering the US women's national soccer team on their road to the World Cup in 2019.

And at the time, they were in the midst of this very public lawsuit with their employer over equal pay.

And it really struck me how much this had captivated a nation.

So people who didn't otherwise know anything about soccer, didn't even really care about sports, were engaged in this fight in a way that I think was really singular and speaks to the power of women athletes to mobilize.

So the more I started reporting on the history of this fight in women's soccer, I started looking at the fight for equality more broadly within the sports landscape.

And it just became undeniable that this was a way that we could really kind of move the needle.

- So the book is a tour of the role women play in sports, obviously, and also in the economy and in society in general, but it's also more than that.

Why is sports such a good lens to bring us into those broader cultural and social issues of gender and equality and fairness and social justice and much, much more?

Why does that work so well in this book?

And tell us about these issues too.

- Yeah.

Yeah, well, I think the first thing to highlight there is really the platform that athletes have.

So obviously an athlete in any sport is going to have a bigger megaphone than somebody working in HR or somebody working at a grocery store or Starbucks.

So I think we're really able to kind of get into these issues in a much more public way when we engage with athletes.

And they also provide us a lot of transparency into these issues.

So obviously there's a pay gap playing out at every company in basically the world, but certainly in the US, but we don't get to see that data.

We don't get to talk about it in such a big way.

Whereas when we look at sports, we have a lot of publicly available numbers.

We can look at the prize money for the Women's World Cup versus the Men's World Cup and actually measure what that gap looks like and start getting into the issues behind it, like investment.

- So when you were reporting this book, did you find women and men in sports who were not willing to discuss some of the issues?

I mean, obviously you found many who were, but were there some who were reticent?

And I'm not looking for names here, but why would that be, do you think?

- Yeah, I think that's, it's a great question because certainly there is some reticence there.

I think anytime we're talking about money, it can be a touchy subject and specifically for these athletes, women in these positions, I mean, you're talking about sponsorship deals.

Most of these women are thinking about how they're gonna get their next paycheck.

And certainly we're not seeing huge sponsorship contracts like we see in men's sports.

So it does become critically important.

Are they going to be able to resign with their sponsor next year?

Are they going to be able to keep competing?

Are they gonna have to retire and get a job doing something that the rest of us are doing?

So there's certainly some reluctance to talk about that.

I think that's why it's so remarkable and should be lauded when these athletes do go public.

Thinking of Alysia Montaño and Allyson Felix and Kara Goucher, who really led this conversation about sponsorship or in the motherhood penalty when they spoke out against their sponsors around childbearing and what that looks like from the perspective of women's value.

- So I want to talk or have you talk about inequity, and we're gonna get into that in more detail later on.

Both of my daughters played high school sports and they liked it.

It was important for all kinds of reasons, for teamwork and challenges and accepting defeat and welcoming victory as well.

But the sports they played, and one of my daughters played actually at the college level too, were always in the shadow of the boys' sports and the men's sports.

And I'm guessing that's where these inequities begin at that level and even before high school, with youth soccer leagues and and whatnot.

Talk about that.

- Yeah, so that's such a great point because sports really are this incredibly important community for fostering leadership qualities in us as adults.

There is a vast body of research that shows that both the personal and professional benefits of sports participation as kids, and we see girls drop out of sports at a much faster rate than boys.

That is due to a complex ecosystem of factors that is very much at play in the professional world as well.

So obviously the investment is an issue.

Boys' teams and men's teams are funded at much greater rate than girls' and women's teams.

There's a lot of cultural support and encouragement for boys and men to stay in sports, whereas girls are sort of actively told, you're not gonna be as good at this, there's no future for you here, and so they're encouraged to drop out.

And also just a lack of resources and support.

So when we think about girls going through puberty, we think about later down the line when women start thinking about their childbearing years, there's not support for women to stay in sports in the same way that there is for men.

So, yeah, I think you're absolutely right.

Those issues are happening in youth sports, in college sports, and then you're seeing them really magnified at the professional level.

- You know, Macaela, you marshal a remarkable body of research in this book and there are stats that I would be underlining and making notes in the margins because they were so mind-numbing to me.

One that really struck me, and this is a quote, so, "For every dollar Steph Curry brought home, the Seattle Storms' star power forward, Breanna Stewart, earned less than half a cent."

How do we explain that level of inequity?

- Yeah, so there's two important things to understand about pay in professional sports.

So one, we're talking about actual contracts, salaries from teams and leagues, and then we're talking about sponsorship dollars.

And in both arenas, we're seeing a huge, huge pay disparity.

So for example, when we talk about the NBA and the WNBA, player salaries, there's a massive gulf between the two.

Men are signing these multi-million dollar, multi-year contracts where the supermax salary in the WNBA is around $200,000.

So there's actually some of, there's a couple of teams where the mascot for the NBA team, the brother team to the WNBA team in that city, makes more than the highest-paid WNBA player, which is just wild.

And this, I think the players in the WNBA in particular have done an excellent job of really shining a light on why that is.

And it goes back to investment.

The WNBA as a league, for example, is very galvanized to close the big pay gap.

Commissioner Cathy Engelbert has been very vocal about that.

She's worked incredibly hard to get more sponsorship coming into the league, more dollars flowing into the league, but the money has to be there in order for it to get to the players.

- So there are critics though who would contend that, well, look, men's sports is just different.

It's more popular, more people watch it, and that's why their star athletes make more money.

Is there any truth to that?

- Yeah, there is, and I think it's important to point that out.

In most cases, not all, but most that is true, men's sports do enjoy higher viewership numbers.

But I think the really important thing here is you have to look at the context.

So for example, let's stick with the basketball example.

The NBA was founded just over 75 years ago, where the WNBA is only about 25 years old.

So the men's teams have benefited from nearly half a century more of investment, of time to grow a fan base, of cultivating that audience, and really being able to create this top class entertainment product, whereas the WNBA is much younger in their journey.

I think if we were to compare where the NBA was at year 25 with where the WNBA is now, we'd probably see that the WNBA is outperforming where the men's teams were at that point.

But it's an apples to oranges comparison.

You can't look at a league that's had nearly a century to develop and hold the women's teams, which are just at 25 years, to the same standards.

- Well, one of the other things that you said that there's a question you asked that has lingered with me, but it's about what do we define as sort of the acme of athletic prowess?

And if it's explosive power, if it's strength, if it's how fast you can run 100 meters, our definition might be different if instead we were looking at agility, balance, and how fast you could run the 800 meters.

Can you unpack that a little bit for us?

- Yeah, so this is one of my favorite things to dig into the research on for the book and to really talk to the people who are leading that research.

But there's a lot that comes into play around biological differences when we talk about sports, right?

And that's often an argument that's thrown around is that men are going to be physically athletically superior to women, so therefore they deserve to make more money.

That's just not true.

And I think so much of it depends on what our cultural definitions of what athletic superiority looks like.

So, for example, we could be saying that the absolute best in class athleticism is the ability to do a back flip on a balance beam, in which case, Simone Biles should be making more money than any other athlete in the world, right?

So a lot of that is just rooted in what our cultural definitions of athletic superiority look like.

But even within the same sports, if we look at running, for example, there are plenty of examples of areas in which men and women going head to head.

It doesn't necessarily play out the way that you think it would.

There's this example I use in the book that was one of my favorite things that I uncovered while reporting, which is Usain Bolt talking about how if he were to run, I think it was the 200 meters, he would absolutely lose to most professional women.

That's just not his race.

It's not his distance.

It's not what he excels at.

And if you look at the actual records in that race, there's like a thousand women who have better times than his best time, and yet he's the fastest man in the world.

So I think that that really underscores the idea that context matters here.

It's not just a matter of saying all men are going to be athletically superior to all women.

- So how do you respond to those who contend that banning trans women from competing in women's sports is about fairness, is a matter of fairness?

And this has been a very controversial and consistent topic of conversation.

I've certainly heard it on talk radio and read about it.

And how do you respond to that?

- Yeah, so this is the thing that I have gotten asked about the most throughout the reporting process of the book, because you're right, it is extremely controversial and it feels like one of those things that even people who would identify as being supporters of trans rights in other areas, they say, "When it comes to sports, I don't know.

I'm kind of uncomfortable with that.

Is there an unfair advantage?"

So that's something I really wanted to dig into in the book and look at what the facts are there.

And I think there's two really important things to point out.

First is that there is not this huge wave of transgender athletes who are coming in and, quote, taking spots from girls and women.

I think that is a misconception that's really been fueled by a lot of sensationalist media reports, but there are actually more bills addressing the banning of trans athletes in sports than there are out trans athletes competing at the school level.

- Wow.

- That's a remarkable stat.

- Yeah, that's crazy.

- Yeah.

And I think that really says a lot about the motivations behind a lot of these bills.

So first of all, this isn't some huge epidemic in sports that's threatening the integrity of the game as we know.

Secondly, I think it's important to point out that sports are based on individual differences.

That's why we like sports is because athletes have different advantages that allow them to excel in a way that makes the game so great.

So, for example, Michael Phelps has certain biological advantages that allowed him to exceed in his career, and we love him for that.

That's why we love to watch him.

We love to watch athletes excel in this way.

So I don't think that it makes any sense to start bringing in this idea of a, quote, biologically level playing field because that's not what sports are.

I mean, if we start regulating people's physical advantages or disadvantages, then we really are changing the way that we think about competition.

- So the trans issue in sports is, again, another one of those issues that is reflective of something bigger, meaning bigger in the culture, in society, in politics.

Talk about that.

Why has this become such a lightning rod for people outside of the world of sports?

- Yeah, I mean, I think it really comes down to people feeling uncomfortable with what's different.

I talk about white feminism in the book and looking at how that has played out in society and what it looks like in sports, because I think sports are really this excellent example of intersectional feminism.

But one of the things that I thought was so fascinating was when we look back now at the right to vote, for example, white women led that charge by actively suppressing the right of Black women's vote.

Now, a hundred years later, we look back and say that was wrong to define women as white women when it comes to their right to participate in a certain space.

I think a hundred years from now, we're gonna be looking back and saying it's wrong to try and define women as only cis women having a right to participate in a certain space.

But I think sports just really has become this wedge issue in this larger idea of who gets to define themselves as a woman.

- You know, Macaela, I think that your book does a wonderful job too of sort of documenting the experiences of various women who actually changed the way we think about women in sports and women in society.

Top of the list maybe is Billie Jean King.

The US Women's National team is another dynamic there.

Are there things that those change-makers had in common that sort of appeared to you as you were researching and writing the book?

- Yeah, absolutely.

I mean, I think the number one thing that they have in common is understanding that their fight is about more than them and is about more than sports.

So Billie Jean King has been such an incredible pioneer in this space and I felt so fortunate to get to be able to speak to her for the book.

But she has always been absolutely crystal clear that fighting for equity in women's sports is about fighting for equity for women.

So she understood from the very beginning that this was going to have an impact on culture.

So one of my favorite stories that I share in the book is her preparation for the Battle of the Sexes in 1970 with Bobby Riggs, which was this over-the-top spectacle of who was really the weaker sex.

They really kind of hammed it up.

They played off of a lot of gender stereotypes at the time, and the match attracted 90 million viewers globally.

And she was extremely aware that she had this huge audience in which she was either going to be able to confirm stereotypes about women or upend them entirely, which she obviously did in beating Bobby Riggs.

And she shared that there hasn't been a day that's gone by in her life since then that she hasn't been asked about that match and women haven't shared with her how it inspired them to ask for raises, how it inspired them to really ask for more, fathers sharing how it impacted their view of their daughters.

So I think that what these women have in common is that they know that their fight is bigger than them and that the world is really watching.

- Yeah, that emerged to me too from your reporting and particularly the way, when I think about some of the things that the WNBA has done, the players have done to really make even their contracts about something bigger than themselves.

Can you speak a little bit about that?

- Yeah, so I think the women of the WNBA are really just absolutely the gold standard when it comes to collective action.

So they understand the power of their union, they know that they're stronger standing together, and they operate extremely efficiently as a group.

So, for example, one of the things that they were able to achieve in their latest collective bargaining agreement was paid parental leave, which obviously is not something that we've been able to achieve nationally.

And they knew that when they were going into their negotiations.

And it was something that I think they very much viewed as a contract that could be a model for other industries and certainly at the national level.

- So inequality in sports is, again, reflected in the greater culture in terms of pay.

And with some rare exceptions, men in many positions, most positions earn way more than women for doing exactly the same thing.

And that's from blue collar work to corporate work and everything in between.

Talk about that 'cause I think, again, that's another power of your book, bringing that to light and exploring that.

- Yeah, so I think this is one of the most important points of the book and really I think speaks to the power of sports.

So pay discrimination has been illegal in the United States since 1963, and yet it still happens.

There's around a 20% pay gap in any given industry across most of the world.

Pay discrimination has been illegal for decades, but we still see it happening every single day.

What that tells me is that we need broader culture change.

It's not just that we need legislation to close the pay gap, but it's that we need to actually really actively challenge the assumptions about women's worth and the worth of other marginalized groups in order to see lasting progress.

- You know, Macaela, we've got about four minutes left here and I think that the topic I want to go to next could have been the entire episode, but-- - [G.] We always do this, by the way.

- You write about sort of the double-edged sword of female sexuality in the world of sports as well.

We don't have time to do entire justice to it, but I'm curious if you can explain sort of the double-edged nature of that, particularly in the context of feminism and the fact that we're in 2023 and you can still be penalized as a woman athlete if you refuse to wear a bikini for competition.

- Yeah, so you're right.

There's a lot happening there.

I think at the top level, we think about sponsorship and the way that women athletes are presented.

So there's obviously, there's the impulse to sexualize, sex sells being an adage that has been true in advertising for a long time.

That's a very complicated space for women.

Mary Jo Kane has done a lot of research on the way that women athletes are presented and the way that they would like to present themselves and most women athletes would like to present themselves as sports competitors, but they understand that bringing more attention to the sport often comes with a certain amount of sexualization, which I feel like can be really complicated.

And the problem is there's just a double standard that exists for men and women.

So for example, David Beckham can be in an underwear ad, shirtless and showing off his body and be praised for that and even often thought of as a better athlete for that when we really get into it and dissect what his body looks like and people having conversations about that as opposed to when a woman athlete appears in Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue or the ESPN Body Issue, for example.

And she's essentially shamed for that and taken less seriously because of it.

So I think that's one really important thing to think about and in terms of how we cover that in the media.

And then as you bring up with what women wear in competition, there's a lot of really mixed messages and signals around that.

So certain sports teams are penalized for wearing uniforms that offer more coverage, basically nodding to the fact that networks want to put athletes on TV who are showing less.

- So what can people who care about these issues, and that should really be everyone, what can they do, both in terms of the world of women in sports and in the world in general?

What can the ordinary person do to move things along here to get to a better place?

- Yeah, I mean, I think the easiest thing that we can do is watch women's sports, support them, engage with them on social media.

Sports have this incredibly transformative power for both boys and girls, men and women.

And that's something that we should be engaging with as much as possible.

And yeah, just being able to support your local sports team, buying season tickets.

Unfortunately, they're pretty cheap in most markets, so that's usually a pretty accessible thing that people can do.

And again, engaging these women on social media.

I think the larger their followings are, the more power that they're able to have in kind of shaping these issues.

- Macaela, we literally have about 15 seconds left, but should there be leagues where men and women compete together?

- Yeah, absolutely.

I think mixed gender competition is gonna be a really interesting sort of future for the way that we talk about gender in sport.

We're starting to see it happen with more Olympic teams training together, both the men and women athletes, and also the rise of non-binary categories in competition as well.

- Now, look, we could talk to you for weeks about this.

We've skimmed the surface today.

The book "Money, Power, Respect," it's absolutely worth the read.

Thank you so much, Macaela Mackenzie, for being with us today.

That is all the time we have this week, but if you want to know more about "Story in the Public Square," you can find us on social media or visit pellcenter.org.

For Wayne, I'm Jim, asking you to join us again next time for more "Story in the Public Square."

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