The Chronicle of Higher Education today discusses a report arguing that colleges charging more for tickets to men’s basketball games than do for women’s games reflects pervasive, deep-seated sex discrimination.
The report, “Ticket Office Sexism: The Gender Gap in Pricing for NCAA Division I Basketball,” was published by the Wellesley Centers for Women at Wellesley College. It presents data that rebut a “popular but faulty” argument that colleges charge less for women’s games than for men’s because those events fail to draw comparable crowds—or because the women’s teams rank lower than the men’s teams.
Among the top 25 men’s and women’s teams, the report says, colleges charged nearly three times as much, on average, for single-game seats for men’s games. The disparity was even greater for season tickets, with the average highest-priced package at $233 for women and $2,500 for men.
Whatever the motives of those who set ticket prices, the argument (or is it merely an implication here?) that the crowds drawn by women’s basketball are “comparable” to those drawn by the men is not true. According to data published by the NCAA, the total home attendance for the attendance for the 330 Division 1 men’s teams in 2009 25,378,235, and the average home game attendance was 5,185. For the 328 Division 1 women’s teams, the total attendance was 7,516,709, and the average home attendance was 1,612.
I have not read the Wellesley Centers for Women report (available for purchase on its web site), but if anyone has I’d like to know how these attendance figures were regarded as “comparable.” Or perhaps its just that the Wellesley Centers for Women authors do not believe there should be any connection between demand and price. In any event, the demand that that the price difference is both evidence and proof of sex discrimination seems to be a classic example of “comparable worth,” as defined succinctly by labor economist June O’Neill:
Should a truck driver earn more than a telephone operator, or an engineer more than a librarian? Questions like these are largely resolved in the labor market by the forces of supply and demand. Proponents of comparable worth, however, challenge the resulting pattern of wages by arguing that occupations dominated by female workers are paid less than comparable male-dominated jobs because of systematic discrimination against women. Under comparable worth, employers would be required to set wages to reflect differences in the “worth” of jobs, with worth largely determined by job evaluation studies, not by market forces.
Perhaps the Obama administration should appoint a Basketball Czar (or Czarina) to set ticket prices, or that assignment could more simply be given to the ubiquitous college deans, vice presidents, etc., of “diversity.”
