A new report has detailed some of the worst countries to be a female gamer. Finland was noted to have the largest gender pay gap in esports, worldwide.
Esports gaming has grown extremely popular in recent years, with some countries even offering esports education courses. Recently the esports space has been tackling some difficult times with issues of sourcing funds and gaining investors.
Despite this, esports gaming still has over 3 billion active online gamers worldwide. These community members are creating content and some are competing in global online tournaments with prize pools as high as $40 million. Yet, another issue the industry is facing is a lack of gender diversity. Professional online gaming is still predominantly occupied by male gamers, where very few female gamers are represented to the same level in rank, or earnings.
Women in esports
BesteOnlineCasinos commissioned a study that has uncovered details regarding which countries present the largest gender pay gap in esports. This compares the total earnings of both male and female gamers across the globe. It turns out Finland is the worst country to be a professional esports gamer for females.
Female Finnish gamers earn an average annual earning of $332. This equates to just 7 cents for every $100 earned by a male counterpart. The male average annual earnings in comparison come up to $459,925. That’s a huge 99.93% difference between the two salaries. The report notes that there are three professional Finnish esports gamers ranking in the top 100 for highest-earning gamers, which are all male. The highest is Jesse ‘JerAx’ Vainikka, who has a total earning of over $6 million.
Currently, there are no female Finnish gamers in the top earning 500. However, the top 500 highest-paid female list consists of 10 Finnish players. Tuula Rantala is noted as the highest female earner, ranking in at 502 of all gamers in Finland with total earnings of just over $1000.
Around the globe
The second largest divide comes from Peruvian female gamers who earn 99.62% less than their male counterparts. Here females earn an annual average of $312 compared to males who earn $81,767. Peru has just 20 female gamers ranking the country.
Malaysia has the third largest gender pay gap in esports. The average annual earnings for Malaysian female gamers is $965, as opposed to males who have earnings of $242,565. This means that the average female gamer here is earning two times higher than that of Finnish female players. However, there is still a very clear divide between male and female earnings.
For a sport that should work on such an equal playing field regardless of gender, it’s clear there is a very distinctive pay gap. Women have long battled for equal pay across various workplaces and esports is showing itself to also have a distinctive gap. Unfortunately, we have seen reports that women are suffering the same issues in the metaverse.
While in some areas we see improvements for women In the workplace there is still a lot of work that needs to be done. Not only for pay but also for women to feel valued in their workplaces. The Women In Esports initiative is one group attempting to improve representation and diversity within esports.
Paige Cook is a writer with a multi-media background. She has experience covering video games and technology and also has freelance experience in video editing, graphic design, and photography. Paige is a massive fan of the movie industry and loves a good TV show, if she is not watching something interesting then she's probably playing video games or buried in a good book. Her latest addiction is virtual photography and currently spends far too much time taking pretty pictures in games rather than actually finishing them.
