Via Nikkei Asia, a look at how sports pay highlights a glaring gender disparity in Australia:

Speed, strength, skill and a will-to-win attitude make Tamika Upton a dominant force in the sport of her choice — rugby league, one of four football codes popular in Australia, alongside rugby union, Australian Rules and soccer.

Upton, 26, is the firecracker fullback for Newcastle Knights, the reigning champions of the elite National Rugby League Women’s competition. Club President Philip Gardner and his football Director Peter Parr regard Upton as arguably the best female player in the world, and every week during the football season she demonstrates why.

Upton, who stands 178 centimeters tall and weighs 64 kilograms, makes more runs and clocks up more meters than any other player. It was no surprise that she scored a try, ran the most meters and was named player of the match when Newcastle won its first premiership in October 2022, beating the Parramatta Eels, a Sydney club, in front of 43,000 spectators.

This year, she went a step further. On Sept. 27, at a gala awards night in Sydney, Upton was named the NRLW player of the year for 2023, telling the audience, “I’m pretty privileged to be surrounded by the most amazing players and people” at Newcastle. Four days later, she was the standout player in the league’s grand final, scoring two tries as the Knights beat the Gold Coast Titans 24-18 to clinch a second consecutive premiership title. Once again Upton was named player of the match.

In April, Upton signed a five-year deal — the longest to date for a woman in Australia — to play with Newcastle until the end of 2027, at a reported salary of 100,000 Australian dollars a year ($63,410). Endorsements and sponsorship opportunities give her the potential to earn much more, but her salary indicates the vast gulf that separates women from men in most professional sports in Australia. Upton’s male counterpart at the Newcastle Knights, captain and fullback Kalyn Ponga, is on a reported AU$1.4 million a year for the next five years, and even the lowest-paid male Knights players make AU$150,000.

So why the disparity? Full professionalism has been a long time coming for women in sport, and television broadcasters have struggled to convince advertisers and other sponsors of their value. While the broadcaster Channel 9 was delighted that almost 800,000 television viewers watched the NRLW grand final on Oct. 1, a record figure, by the time the men played a few hours later, the audience had grown to 2.9 million.

But things may be changing. Newcastle, a city of 400,000 people 120 kilometers north of Sydney, is known for the fervor of its “footy” fans — whether it be for the Knights, the Jets (soccer), the City Blues (Australian Rules) or the Newcastle/Hunter rugby union teams. This year, Newcastle enthusiastically joined in an outbreak of “Matilda mania” that raged across Australia when the 2023 women’s soccer World Cup, jointly hosted by Australia and New Zealand, got underway in August.

Television ratings and social media coverage soared as Australian audiences decided that the women’s national soccer team, the Matildas, led by charismatic captain Sam Kerr and featuring four current and former Newcastle Jets — Clare Wheeler, Alanna Kennedy, Cortnee Vine and Emily van Egmond — was worth watching.

When the Matildas made it into the final four of the competition, Australian supporters were ecstatic. Media outlets obliged with unprecedented coverage of the players’ exploits, lifestyles and earning capacity.

A few weeks after Spain beat England in Sydney in the Aug. 20 World Cup final (Australia lost the playoff for third place to Sweden) before 75,000 spectators, 350 schoolgirls gathered on a Sunday morning on the foreshores of Newcastle harbor for some guidance on how to make it in the world of professional women’s sport.

The girls, aged up to 16, were taking part in the annual Girls Day Out — Women in Sport event, which brings them together with elite female professional athletes for a series of mini clinics that will help them decide whether playing sport for money appeals to them.

For Women in Sport founder Kirsten Ansell, the day is all about showing young girls that their dreams are achievable, by putting them face to face with women who have made it happen.

Newcastle Jets women’s captain Cassidy Davis led one clinic, as did touch rugby star Jess Potts. It was not just about football though; up and coming surfer Nat Fensom, and hockey champions Ellie and Hunter Baldwin were also on hand to share their knowledge and experience with young devotees.

Their presence reflects the reality that the big money young Australian sportswomen can chase is most often found outside football, in sports such as golf, tennis, surfing, basketball and cricket.

Tennis and surfing are the leaders globally in pay equity at the elite level. The big four tennis grand slam tournaments — Wimbledon and the Australian, U.S. and French Opens — have offered equal prize money to men and women since 2007, while since 2019 the World Surf League has mandated uniform cash prizes for men and women.

Australian tennis champion Ash Barty’s career earnings stood at more than $15 million when she retired last year at the age of 26, while golfing star Minjee Lee, 27, has earned $13 million since turning professional in 2014 at the age of 18. Surfer Stephanie Gilmore’s five-year sponsorship deal with surf brand Quiksilver is thought to be worth AU$1 million a year, and cricketer Ellyse Perry’s various endorsements and playing contracts in Australia and India bring in about AU$1 million a year.

Since 2020, Cricket Australia has ensured that its men’s and women’s teams get the same prize money from international tournament victories — unlike soccer, where a big gap remains.

Matildas captain Kerr, who plays for the English club Chelsea, heads the earnings list of Australian soccer players on more than AU$3 million a year, followed by Ellie Carpenter, with the French club Lyon, on AU$1 million-plus. Other Matildas earn between AU$250,000 and AU$500,000 playing in the big leagues of Europe and North America.

But these sums pale against men’s earnings. Earlier this year, Harry Souttarr became Australia’s highest-paid male player when he signed a five-year deal worth AU$26 million with Leicester City, then playing in the English Premier League, although that is small change compared to the reported $300 million a year Brazil’s Neymar Junior will earn playing for top Saudi Arabian club Al Hilal. Portugal’s Christiano Ronaldo is reported to be on $200 million for another Saudi Arabian club, Al-Nassr.

Back in Australia, the pay scale for a professional female footballer is abysmal. This year, for example, the minimum wage for a woman playing in the top-level A-League soccer competition is AU$25,000.

Pay is not much better in the other codes: The average wage in the NRLW for the 2023 season is AU$37,500, though it is projected to rise to AU$63,250 by 2027. The fledgling rugby union competition for women known as Super W will pay its elite players up to AU$3,000 a week for the seven-week competition, plus a potential top-up from the national Rugby Australia body of AU$4,000 a week.

Only the women playing in the Australian Rules AFLW women’s competition do reasonably well, with salaries for 540 players at 18 clubs averaging AU$46,000 in 2022. A pay rise announced in September will see the average salary rise to AU$82,000 by 2027, and at least 40 top players now earn more than AU$100,000. That is still way behind the men, however, whose average pay will rise from AU$387,000 in 2022 to AU$519,000 by 2027. Currently semiprofessional, the AFLW is aiming to become a full-time professional league by 2026.

In cricket, the average wage for an elite female player in Australia is AU$150,000. For a netballer, the average is AU$75,000 and for a basketballer, AU$38,000.

Last December, when the National Rugby League announced new salary caps for 2023, its funding deal for female players provoked a sharp response from former top-level player Katie Brown. She tweeted on X, formerly known as Twitter: “‘Record breaking’ deals for the NRL $12.1 million and NRLW $884,000. You’re giving a whole women’s playing group ONE man’s salary. What a joke.” An anonymous respondent wrote: “That is 8% of the men’s salary cap. I bet that the NRLW does not bring in 8% in revenue … 884K cap is very comparable to the AFL and the cricket. Stop complaining, you guys got a great deal.”

Revenue raising from broadcast rights, advertising and brand sponsorship has always been the sticking point for pay equity. But research in April-May this year by the Gemba sports and entertainment marketing group showed an 18% year-on-year lift in television audiences for women’s sport in Australia. While the biggest ratings — and hence the most valuable sponsorship and marketing rights — still go to the AFL and NRL men’s competitions, the Matildas and Ash Barty’s victory in the 2022 Australian Open tennis show that women’s sports can command huge audiences. Brands know this, and are following the audiences, according to Gemba.

Outside sport, there are plenty of examples of women excelling at the highest levels in business and public service in Australia, with pay packets to match. The governor of the Reserve Bank of Australia, the central bank, is female, as is the new vice chancellor and president of the Australian National University, from January 2024. The chief executives of the nation’s two largest telecommunications companies, Telstra and Optus, are women. The same goes for the two biggest airlines, Qantas and Virgin Australia, the biggest investment bank, Macquarie, the biggest energy company, Woodside Energy, the biggest gold miner, Newcrest, and the big supermarket chain, Coles.

According to the Australian Bureau of Statistics, average annual earnings for Australian women across all employment sectors in May 2023 were between AU$83,460 (private sector) and AU$98,650 (public sector). For men, the comparable figures were AU$99,000 (private) and AU$110,000 (public). Given the much larger gap between male and female athletes across all sports, it is clear that pay equity in sport has some way to go.

For Upton, though, money is not everything. She identifies as an Indigenous woman from the Baradha people of Central Queensland, and when she signed with Newcastle she said was committed to being a leader on and off the field.

“Being a leader on the field and in the community is something I take very seriously, and I am looking forward to growing in this space with the Knights,” Upton said.