President Obama hosted the 2015 WNBA champion Minnesota Lynx at the White House on Monday for the third time in five years. As the president wound down his remarks praising the players for the examples they set for young people, he quoted one of the Lynx’s players, Maya Moore:
The president then, based on the video, appeared to either depart from his prepared remarks or slowly and deliberately deliver lines that he anticipated would be well received by his audience.
The crowd did not disappoint and loudly applauded the idea of equal pay. The president then quickly turned the microphone over to another Lynx player, Lindsay Whalen.
The White House had plans for the president’s words and soon tweeted the following:
“I am for equal pay for equal work.” —@POTUS on #EqualPay and professional sports: https://t.co/jp7URKXWzm
— White House Archived (@ObamaWhiteHouse) June 27, 2016
Based on White House transcripts of appearances with previous WNBA champions, this is the first time in his almost eight years in office that the president has raised this issue in conjunction with a WBNA White House visit. And while the White House often trots out the dubious claim that “women earn seventy-nine cents on the dollar” compared to men, the difference between men and women in professional basketball is indisputably enormous. According to the Women’s Sports Foundation, the minimum annual salary in the WNBA for 2015 was $38,913, while the minimum in the 2015-2016 season for the NBA was $525,093. The president did not make clear if he believed that salaries in the NBA and WNBA should be comparable. Total revenue for the WNBA is of course dwarfed by that of the NBA.
Although today’s tweet specifically cited “#EqualPay and professional sports,” the White House press office did not respond to a request for further clarification or if the president would propose any legislation to deal specifically with equal pay and professional sports. The equal pay issue is one that this White House has repeatedly pushed despite assertions that the president’s own White House staff has a pay gap between average salaries of women and men.
