Commission recommends ‘fundamental overhaul’ of women’s cricket pay structure

The Impartial Fee for Fairness in Cricket (ICEC) has advisable the ECB oversees “a basic overhaul” to the pay construction of girls’s cricket in England and Wales.

The fee discovered that in 2021, “England Males acquired 13 occasions the quantity paid to England Ladies”. Whereas the report acknowledges this displays the actual fact girls play much less Take a look at cricket, “credible proof” confirmed the typical wage for England Ladies was 20.6% the typical of their male equivalents for enjoying limited-overs cricket – though the ECB considers this determine nearer to 30%.

Additional disparity was unearthed round worldwide match charges. Whereas girls obtain 25% or much less of the boys’s charges, solely these within the taking part in XI are paid, versus the complete squad as it’s with the boys. Given harm funds are calculated as a portion of match charges, that inequality turns into compounded.

Variations in bonuses have been additionally stark, with the report discovering England Ladies’s fastened bonus pot equates to round 8% of the boys’s, whose win bonuses are structured by a matrix contemplating every match win after which its contribution to a collection win. One other space for enchancment is making certain girls obtain the identical advantages as males at worldwide matches. These embrace abroad tour premiums, hospitality provisions corresponding to tickets, hospitality bins for household at weekends, and transport for households to and from matches.

The fee felt England Ladies’s common salaries, industrial pay, charges, bonuses and captain’s allowances ought to be equal to England Males’s in white-ball by 2028. In addition they suggested the ECB to top-up prize cash for the ladies’s ODI and T20I World Cups to reflect the boys till the ICC fixes that hole.

“There ought to be total equal pay at worldwide stage by 2030,” the report stated. “By this, we imply common pay, as a result of we recognise that there can be totally different ranges of pay inside the groups, with the highest gamers (males or girls) being paid probably the most.”

The suggestions round home cricket embrace salaries and bonuses within the girls’s Hundred to be equal by 2025 and totally skilled girls’s regional groups by 2025. This consists of rookie contracts launched by the beginning of the 2024 season and a minimal wage equal to these in impact for first-class county gamers (circa £27,500).

“The ladies’s sport stays the poor relation of its male counterpart in English and Welsh cricket,” the fee stated. “While we discovered good proof of serious year-on-year enchancment, we additionally discovered simple proof of inequitable funding and unequal remedy for which we discovered no cheap justification. Vital pay disparities persist.

“We take into account it a matter of each equity and justice that that is remedied at pace. Ladies have the proper to equal pay for equal work and shouldn’t be penalised for having fewer alternatives to play than their male counterparts. Importantly, if the dedication to make cricket in England and Wales equitable is critical, it requires the sport to acknowledge and tackle the historic underinvestment and lack of truthful (or certainly any) remuneration that ladies have confronted for many years.”