In a world where NBA players make about $560,000 as a starting salary, WNBA players earn a bulk of their income through side jobs, with starting salaries at just $50,000.
Nneka Ogwumike, a superstar from the Los Angeles Sparks, made the game-winning shot to secure the WNBA championship title for her team last year. But she earns 20 percent less than an NBA player’s salary, and the MVP said that side gigs make up a bulk of her earnings, reports CNBC.
Ogwumike was the No. 1 overall draft pick and winner of the Rookie of the Year award in 2012. She told Maverick Carter in an episode of Kneading Dough, a new series by Chase and digital media company Uninterrupted, that there is still a lot of work to be done.
“Once you get more eyes on us, more ears on us, it’ll bring more business and more private entities that help support us,” she said.
This is not just an issue in basketball. The gender pay gap can be found across the board. According to CNBC, men earned 2.4 percent more than women on average.
Ogwumike said she did not know she could earn a living player basketball as a woman until her senior year of college when she was signed with the Sparks. But still, to earn extra money, the 27-year-old player said a lot of her teammates have jobs on the side or start their own businesses, reports .
Ogwumike herself plays basketball in Russia during the off-season for the Dynamo Kursk squad. Ogwumike said that there are a “lot of very ambitious women in the league,” the majority of whom have degrees.
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