Gender equality in women’s professional sport. Progress and pending challenges

Despite the progress made in terms of gender equality in all areas, there are still numerous difficulties and challenges that professional athletes continue to face. In this regard, is important to determine if there are effective legal tools to achieve this equality in real and effective terms. To do that, we analyze the legal framework of employment relationship of professional athletes, with special reference to male and female sports collective agreements and the new Sports Law of December 30, 2022. As main results we found that there have been clear advances in this area. of equality in the sporting field, but there are still challenges to conquer. An example of this is that the regulatory instruments that specifically regulate the collective rights of professional athletes depend on the gender of worker. An aspect only occurs in sports and is especially striking. Furthermore, they appear insufficient. Especially in some sports disciplines that do not even have a female collective agreement that regulates the content of the employment relationship according to their sporting singularities.