Neymar earns more than top seven women’s football leagues combined as study reveals shocking gender pay gap

NEYMAR pockets more in a single season at Paris Saint-Germain than every professional player in the top seven women’s football league combined.

The annual global sports salaries survey details the the astonishing disparity in money in their first examination of the gender pay gap.

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The Brazilian forward will earn £32.9million at PSG for the 2017-18 season for his playing contract alone.

His salary would cover the paychecks of all 1,693 women players in France, Germany, England, USA, Sweden, Australia and Mexico with some change to spare – with their combined total at £32.8m a year.

The average woman playing in the FA Woman’s Super League (FAWSL) is £27,000 – about one percent of the salary of a Premier League player.

French side Lyon – for whom England defender Lucy Bronze plays – is the best paying women’s football club and offers an average annual salary of £145,000.

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That number can be compared more similarly to what a top-paying men’s team would offer in a week and is a far-cry from the average $6.6m annual salary of a Barcelona player – the sports top paying club and fourth best paying of all sports.

It comes as little surprise that male professional athletes take home a bigger paycheck than their female counterparts – by typically attracting larger crowds, more sponsors and crucially bigger TV deals.

But the study scrutinises the gender difference in sports salaries in such detail for the first time – finding that women who do make it earn as little as one hundredth the sums as a man.

However changes seem to be on the way, with Norway leading the charge by announcing their men’s and women’s international teams will be paid equally.

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The Norwegian FA is also almost doubling the remuneration pot for the women from approximately £296,000 to £574,000.

The FA are also looking to make moves by restructuring the FAWSL into a fully professional division of up to 14 teams next season.

Currently, of the 367 total players at the 10 clubs only 157 have professional contracts and even some of those are paid low single-digit thousands per year.

Football is reflective of sports on a whole with the highest playing female team Minnesota Lynx of the WNBA ranking 331st in comprehensive sports salary list.

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The women’s basketball league in the USA is one of the few wholly professional women’s leagues in the world and is the best paying woman’s league.

Their male counterparts in the NBA is the highest payed of all sports with the Oklahoma City Thunder coming in on top of all teams.