Why Are There No Women In The Forbes 100 Richest Athletes?

If you were asked to name one of the worlds biggest, most successful, considerably reported and widely followed (both in life and on social media) sporting stars right now, I'm pretty sure many of us would say Serena Williams.

We followed the news of her engagement, her pregnancy, venture into the world of lifestyle and her attendance at the royal wedding as eagerly as we've watched her journey to becoming the number one tennis player in the world last year. Which only makes it even more astonishing that she, nor any other female athlete, made it onto the 2018 Forbes' 100 richest sports stars.

It's the first time in eight years that this has happened, but even then the list has unsurprisingly always featured more men than women. Last year Serena was the only woman to make the cut at number 51, but having taken time out for her pregnancy and after giving birth to daughter Alexis, she had not played enough to earn the amount of prize money required to make it back into the top 100 earners. If only this re-revelation of the gender pay gap in sport was more surprising than it is.

That's not to say Serena hasn't made earnings elsewhere, of course. Kurt Badenhausen, Forbes' senior editor, told CNN Sport: 'She's more popular than ever with corporate sponsors. By our count she banked $18 million with those partners who she still continues to be engaged with, whether it's IBM, Nike, Wilson, so she does a lot off the court.

'Her endorsement earnings would put her up in the top 10 in the world. She just hasn't any prize money to go with that. I expect once Serena is back on the court and raking up those millions in prize money we'll see her back on the list next year'.

Serena's slip from the coveted list speaks to a wider, all too familiar problem faced by women across all industries who have to take time out of work to have children. The scenario is often one that requires a sacrifice in earnings, the stalling of your previous career, and often having to find other ways to diversify income.

Then, of course, there's also the fact that Serena is a tennis player. We're all too aware of how drastic the gender pay gap is in the sporting world. While many tournaments have recently committed to paying men and women equal prize money, the way and frequency in which women's sport is watched or reported on in comparison to men is dramatically different. Quite simply, there is very little respect or recognition for women's sport and, in reality, tennis is the only sport that we'd ever expect to see a woman represented in a list of earnings. It's one of the few sports we see as much mainstream coverage women's tournaments (for the most part) as much as the men's.

If anything, the omission of women from the list only serves as a reminder of how far the sporting world has to go in the fair and equal treatment of its female athletes. We should be mindful of the fact that at the top of the 2018 high earners list is boxer Floyd Mayweather, a man convicted of violence against women who earns $285 million with little consequence to his appalling behaviour (one count he did pleaded guilty of), while Serena Williams slipped from just the latter half of the list having taken a relatively short amount of time to allow her body to recover after giving birth to a child. We're far from equal footing, and the message that this particular image sends about how we regard women is sport desperately needs addressing.

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