Should female athletes get paid as much as male athletes

I feel that female athletes should not make as much money as male athletes. First, Male athletes post much better times in track events, jump higher and farther, and also throw farther. Men’s tennis players are much better, and I would love to see a women’s football (not soccer) team beat a men’s football team (even the Miami dolphins!). For example, the men’s world record in the 100m is 9.58s and the women’s record is 10.47s. If men perform so much better, shouldn’t they be paid based on merit? In athletics, a professional woman often competes on the same level as high school or college men. For example, the women’s world record in the mile run is 4:12.56 and in the 2012 high school spring track season, more than 50 high school boys ran faster than this(Some of them as young as sophomores in high school). It does not seem fair at all to pay women equally for subpar performances, does it? You can make the argument that they run equal distances so they should be paid the same amount, but the men do much higher quality work, such as sustaining the women’s 5k world record pace for over 8 times as long(marathon). Source: http://www.milesplit.com... Other Examples (Men’s Vs Women’s Records) Mile World Record: 3:43.13 Vs 4:12.56 Marathon World Record:2:03:38 Vs 2:15:25 Shot Put World Record: 23.12m vs 22.63m Decathlon World Record: 9039pts vs 8358pts Just for comparative purposes, the men’s marathon world record pace (~42k) is the same as the women’s 5k world record pace. Source: http://en.wikipedia.org...... Second, far less people attend women's sporting events compared to men's. When Seattle had a basketball team (The Supersonics) attendance was twice as high as the Seattle Storm's. If twice as many people are filling the stands of the NBA versus the WNBA then it's no wonder they are bringing in less revenue. However, it's not just the amount of fans in the stands, it's also a matter of ticket prices. The average attendance for a WNBA game is 8,000 people and the average ticket cost is around fifteen dollars. That is about $120,000 per game. Averaging out to a little over $4,000,000 a season. However, half of the WNBA's games are away games so they only see about $2,000,000 a year in ticket sales. How does that compare to the NBA? The average ticket cost of an NBA game is around $50 (a lot more than the WNBA) and average attendance for the 2009-2010 season was around 16,000. Double that of the WNBA. So that's $800,000 on average per game. Times that by the 41 home games, they play in the regular season and we come to $32,800,000 of yearly ticket sales per team. That is over 16 times the amount the WNBA brings in. And that is just ticket sales. Far more NBA games are televised compared with the WNBA. The average NBA team brings in about $15,000,000 in pure revenue, that means after all expenses (such as salary, taxes, promotions, etc). The WNBA doesn't even turn a profit. How do they stay afloat? The NBA subsidizes the WNBA with about $12 million per year. Therefore men bring in more money and deserve be be paid more Sources: http://nbahoopsonline.com......... http://www.buzzle.com...... http://www.altiusdirectory.com......