On June 3, I had the opportunity to present two projects at the North American Society for Sport Management conference in Atlanta, GA. Both projects interrogate inequities in the sport industry but use different approaches. Below, I share digital abstracts from the two projects, highlighting key findings and takeaways for practitioners.
Racial & Gender Inequality Regimes in Sport: Occupational Segregation & Wage Gaps
In this study, Richard Paulsen (Bloomsburg University of PA) and I analyzed U.S. Census American Community Survey data to uncover occupational segregation and wage gaps by race, ethnicity, and gender in the U.S. spectator sport industry. Importantly, this research includes ALL workers - not just those in top management, coaches, and athletes that are the focus of much of the existing sport diversity literature.
Key findings from the study include that while the industry is overall more than 70% white and male, Black, Hispanic, and women workers are overrepresented in roles that are less central to sport organizations - and often correspond with racialized and gendered ideal worker norms. Additionally, women, Black, and Hispanic workers are more likely to be employed part-time. We also found racial and gender wage gaps in the industry. The gender wage gap for athletes, coaches, officials, and management occupations is larger compared with other U.S. industries; for other occupations, racial and gender wage gaps are similar to the U.S. at large. Interestingly, we found that Black athletes earn more than white athletes, while Hispanic athletes earn less. In interpreting this data, it is important to note that we include the entire U.S. industry - including minor and major league athletes - and cannot control for employer. Sports with robust minor league systems, like hockey and baseball, tend to have a large proportion of white and/or Hispanic players, while sports with a large proportion of Black athletes, like football and basketball, have fewer (or no) paid minor league players. Because minor league players would theoretically earn much less than those at the major league level, the number of minor league players by race may impact this.
Based on these results, we recommend that sport organizations turn attention to diversity at all levels of their organizations, in particular the part-time, temporary workforce which is more likely to be women, Black, or Hispanic. Current policies focus on improving diversity at the top of the organizational hierarchy (e.g., the NFL's Rooney Rule), but inequities occur throughout the organization. Attention should be paid to the distribution of power and resources across the hierarchy.
Gendered Divisions in Men's Professional Sports
This presentation draws from a portion of my dissertation, an ethnographic field study of the business offices of two men's pro sports teams. In this research, I and Nefertiti Walker (UMass Amherst) examined gendered divisions in the men's pro sport workplace and considered how such divisions reproduce gender inequities.
We identified four ways that gendered divisions form: along hierarchies, departments, tasks, and spaces. Hierarchically, men are more likely to hold executive positions in these organizations, while women hold assistant-level roles. Departmentally, the vast majority of sales roles are held by men, while women are close to equally represented in non-sales roles - an important finding given the importance these organizations place on their revenue-producing sales departments. In terms of tasks, women take on extra-role work including office housework that is not reflected in their job titles, while men receive titled recognition for work that is less central to their daily responsibilities. Lastly, men and women are spatially segregated in the offices in ways that can produce inequities in the denotations of power as well as the way that work relationships form as a matter of proximity.
These findings demonstrate the need for sport organizations to consider how gender equity is actually achieved. Simply increasing gender diversity or hiring more women in leadership positions alone will not erase inequities in organizations when other gendered divisions exist.
This research will be available in a forthcoming chapter in The Handbook of Gender & Diversity in Sport Management.
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