Floyd Mayweather

By NATALIA HAWK

Forbes recently published their annual list of the highest-paid athletes in the world.

At the top of the list was Floyd Mayweather, a boxer who earns a whopping $105 million.

All of the world’s other sporting favourites – Cristiano Ronaldo, LeBron James, Tiger Woods, Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal – were all right behind Mr-Moneybags-Mayweather, with all of them earning from the $44 million to $80 million mark.

But there was something missing from the list.

Bet you can guess what it is, right? (I’ll give you a hint – this website is dedicated to them.)

Women. There were barely any women on the list of highest-paid athletes in the world. Of the 100 people featured in the list, only three of them were women.

These women were Maria Sharapova, Li Na and Serena William. All of them are tennis players and the great majority of their cashola comes from endorsements, rather than prize money.

Are you surprised? No, I wasn’t either. I’ve been writing Mamamia’s Sport on Saturdays column for over a year now and every week, it’s the same story.

Female athletes are amazing. They are breaking world records, they are winning gold medals, they are performing remarkably on both international and national levels. And yet they get little recognition and little remuneration for their efforts.

This is particularly true in Australia, where women’s sport is very low on our list of interests. According to research from the Australian Sports Coverage, only 9% of general sports coverage in Australia has anything to do with women in sport.

We are more interested in horse-racin g than we are in our female netball players, soccer players, basketball players, swimmers, snowboarders.

Stephanie Brantz has been a sports presenter since 2000, and has worked across the ABC, Fox Sports and the Nine Network. Prior to presenting, Stephanie excellent in netball, swimming and basketball. She will also be chairing the Asia Pacific Sport and Women Conference on the 17th and 18th of October, which will focus on women’s sports coverage and sponsorship dollars.

I chatted to her about why the women’s sport is so woefully underrepresented in the media. Here’s what she had to say:

And in other sporting news from the week…

– Australian cricketer Meg Lanning is about to become Channel Nine’s first female commentator for men’s cricket. 22-year-old Meg is currently the captain of our Aussie women’s cricket team, the Southern Stars, and she’s been welcomed on to the traditionally all-male panel to commentate the Matador BBQ’s Cup, which is our domestic 50-over tournament. If all goes well, she’s lined up to also commentate the Twenty20 games between Australia and South Africa later in the year. Congratulations, Meg!

-The women’s baseball world cup kicked off in Japan this week. Round one saw our Emeralds score a win against Hong Kong, advancing through to the semi-finals.

– Lauren Jackson will sadly have to sub out of Australia’s basketball world championships next month due to injuries. One of our biggest basketball players, Jackson is going to need hip surgery and further knee rehabilitation. She has already had four operations this year and has been unable to play a game since the very beginning of January. Wishing you a fast recovery, Lauren.

– Our Southern Stars have been battling Pakistan in their T20 matches on the Gold Coast – and they managed an 8-0 clean sweep of their four matches. Congratulations, girls!

– Just in the last few days, it’s been announced that national touch footy, netball and rugby representative, 18-year-old Tanisha Stanton, is set to join the Australian Rugby Union’s sevens squad. 29-year-old football star Lisa de Vanna has also signed back on to play with Melbourne Victory, and netball Firebird Clare McMeniman was selected to play with Diamonds’ for October’s netball test series, despite her retirement three years ago. Comeback time!

Have you seen anything in the sporting world that you’d like to talk about?