Graduation Year

2026

Document Type

Campus Only Senior Thesis

Degree Name

Bachelor of Arts

Department

Mathematics

Second Department

<--Please Select Department-->

Reader 1

Mark Huber

Reader 2

Christopher Towse

Terms of Use & License Information

Terms of Use for work posted in Scholarship@Claremont.

Abstract

Gender-based wage disparities remain a significant issue across many in dustries, including professional sports. This thesis explores compensation differences between female and male professional athletes through statisti cal analysis of earnings distributions in professional basketball, golf, and tennis. The analysis combines exploratory data analysis, summary statistics, earnings ratio comparisons, and a linear regression model to evaluate differ ences in athlete compensation across leagues. Because professional athlete earnings are highly right-skewed, logarithmic transformations were applied to earnings variables in order to better model proportional differences in compensation.

The results indicate that male athletes consistently earn more on average than female athletes across all sports included in this analysis, although the magnitude of the gap varies by sport. Basketball exhibited the largest earnings disparity, while professional tennis showed the smallest. The findings also indicate that women’s earnings distributions tend to be more compressed and lower overall, while men’s leagues contain a larger number of extremely high-earning athletes that heavily influence salary distributions. Regression analysis further showed that league membership remained the strongest predictor of salary differences, even after controlling for player position in professional basketball. Overall, the findings suggest that broader structural factors, including league revenue, media exposure, sponsorship opportunities, and compensation systems all play a role in shaping professional athlete earnings.

Download

This thesis is restricted to the Claremont Colleges current faculty, students, and staff.

Share

COinS