Gizza' job

Perhaps the strangest report which crossed our desks this past week was the one bemoaning the vast gender pay gap in sport.

A new report has found a “vast” gender wage gap exists within sport, with female athletes battling for better pay in a billion-dollar industry that remains predominantly male.

The 2016 Gender Balance in Global Sport report, written in the lead-up to the Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro, was released on Thursday by Women on Boards, an advocacy organisation based in the UK and Australia.

The update to its inaugural report published in June 2014 included data sourced from more than 300 bodies, and showed significant differences in pay for men and women in basketball, golf and football. There had been progress made towards parity in cycling and cricket, while athletics and tennis offered just about equal renumeration for men and women.

We just cannot find any surprise at the fact that such a pay gap exists. That we actually have different competitions for men and women in almost all sports is all the evidence we need that there is indeed a difference here. Equestrianism has no gender divide and it also has no pay gap. Most other sports change given the different propensities of the male and female physiques. That's why we have the gender divide.

One example of which is the Matildas, the Australian national women's team, losing 7 - 0 to the under 16 side from a local men's club. That is not a rugby football score, that is an association football one.

Then we did what we should have done in the first place - read the actual report itself. The solution is apparently that many more women should be appointed to, and thus paid by, the governing bodies of these various sports. The report is written by the sort of women who would get the jobs, and be paid for them, on those governing bodies of the various sports.

That is, this is not about correcting some dreadful market abuse, whereby spectators simply pay for the sport they wish to see. It's about correcting the dreadful market failure of there not being enough lucrative jobs, with interesting sporting awaydays, for a certain type of woman.

Rather than calling is gender balance in global sport the report should really have been called Gizza' Job.