NBA vs WNBA

Steph Curry made 11 million dollars last season while the WNBA MVP Nneka Ogwumike, made $95,000 in 2016 .

http://www.blackenterprise.com/wnba-salaries-nba-salaries-earn/  

Relationship to Sociology -

GENDER CONFLICT THEORY .

Of course there are going to be physical differences in basketball between men and women, the gender conflict theory says that" society is defined by a struggle for dominance among social groups that compete for scarce resources. In the context of gender, conflict theory argues that gender is best understood as men attempting to maintain power and privilege to the detriment of women. Therefore, men can be seen as the dominant group and women as the subordinate group. While certain gender roles may have been appropriate in a hunter-gatherer society, conflict theorists argue that the only reason these roles persist is because the dominant group naturally works to maintain their power and status. According to conflict theory, social problems are created when dominant groups exploit or oppress subordinate groups. Therefore, their approach is normative in that it prescribes changes to the power structure, advocating a balance of power between genders."   https://courses.lumenlearning.com/boundless-sociology/chapter/sociological-perspectives-on-gender-stratification/

People don't recognize the WNBA as an equal to the NBA. So while players can count on basketball for financial support throughout the year. Many female players take jobs outside of basketball. because people are not interested as much in WNBA they do not make as much money and are not advertised like the NBA is advertised.

" Given the salaries and career longevity, the vast majority of WNBA players can't count on basketball to carry them through life. That's a little sad when compared to the money involved in the men's game, but it also guarantees that the women in the league are tuned in to reality. Phoenix's Tamicha Jackson teaches fifth grade in the offseason. Charlotte's Dawn Staley is the head coach of Temple's women's team, where she might one day face Cleveland's Jennifer Rizzotti, who coaches at the University of Hartford. Helen Darling, Rizzotti's teammate, is both the proud mother of triplets and a starting point guard. Houston's Ukari Figgs nearly didn't return for her fifth season in order to take an engineering job. It's not that Figgs doesn't love basketball, but she had to think about her future" .      

https://courses.lumenlearning.com/boundless-sociology/chapter/sociological-perspectives-on-gender-stratification/

http://www.espn.com/page2/s/hays/030605.html  

This article by Graham Hayes gives insight into his viewpoint on Women's basketball, he writes "Well, it's true, the jam remains the great dividing line between men and women. When people talk about women's basketball being boring because the women aren't as talented, they're rarely talking about assist-to-turnover ratios, shooting percentages, or rebounding margins ... they're talking about the dunk." While this is a long article I highly suggest reading some of it because he gives the argument for why some people aren't as involved with women's basketball which is not due to the players lack of ability but the hype around certain elements that are primarily used in the NBA rather than the WNBA.