The most popular sport in the country will now actively support gender equality, thanks to a historic decision made by the Board of Control for Cricket in India. For contracted Indian women cricketers, Jay Shah, Honorary Secretary of the BCCI, has devised a pay fairness policy. Both male and female cricketers will pay the same match cost. According to this policy, women will earn INR 15 lakh for a Test, INR 6 lakh for an ODI, and INR 3 lakh for a T20I, just like men. The fixed salaries of INR 1 lakh for an ODI or T20I appearance and INR 2.5 lakh for a Test match that India's female players now receive are much greater than these sums. For other sports organisations, BCCI has set the bar high. It will promote more female engagement in the game. In recent months, Indian women have had great success. Following their silver-medal performance at the 2022 Commonwealth Games in August, they swept England 3-0 in an ODI series in England in September. India defeated Sri Lanka earlier this month to win the Asia Cup for a record-tying seventh time in Bangladesh. Next, they will host Australia for five Twenty20 Internationals in November and December.
The Indian women's cricket team has had a memorable year thanks to recent victories in the Asia Cup and the Commonwealth Games as well as endorsement deals for some of its stars. However, the news that female cricketers under contract with the BCCI would receive the same pay as their male counterparts must have warmed the hearts of the women in blue. This is a historic development; after New Zealand, India is the second cricket-playing country to pay both male and female players equally.
The historic move made by cricket should encourage other sporting organisations to rethink their compensation structures and achieve gender equity. The tennis world was rocked at the highest level in 2019 when tennis ace Serene Williams asked her male counterparts to make her demand for equal pay more vocal. The gender wage disparity is not exclusive to India. Men and women who win the US Open receive equal prize money, but this didn't happen until 1973 when Billie Jean King threatened to boycott the event if men and women weren't given equal compensation.
Equal remuneration at home will probably encourage more women to take up sports seriously. For women to succeed in sports at the highest levels of competition, the ecology must also be made more gender-friendly; narrowing the gender pay gap alone is not enough. Women's cricket requires facilities like travelling companions for women with young children, coaching centres and academies, support networks in small towns, competitive local or regional tournaments, and more. The fundamental mistake institutions make when mainstreaming gender issues is assuming equal pay is the end goal; in reality, it is just the beginning.
If the discourse about the gender pay gap — and the gender gap in the workforce itself, which has seen an alarming decline in the number of women in the last decade — gets up in non-sports realms, the BCCI's decision will serve a bigger purpose. According to recent reports, Indian women earn on average 28% less than men who perform the same profession; in 1993–1994 the difference was 48%. Clearly, the distance was shrinking. The gender pay gap increased by 7% between 2019 and 2021, though the pandemic partially offset some of the gains.
There is obviously still a lot of work to be done to achieve parity and close the gender pay gap. The BCCI scored six consecutive, which should inspire other organisations and sports bodies to do the same.
