Congratulations to Coco Gauff, who topped Forbes’s list of the highest-paid female athletes of 2024. Reportedly, the 20-year-old tennis phenom brought in a cool $34.4 million over the past year. Not bad for a person who’s not even old enough to drink yet.
Gauff’s 2024 income was $10 million more than the second highest-paid female athlete, Polish tennis player Iga Świątek, and nearly three times the $12.9 million earned by Naomi Osaka, who came in sixth on the Forbes list. Venus Williams was ninth on the list with $12.1 million and Simone Biles was 10th, bringing in $11.2 million.
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As impressive as these figures are, it’s perhaps important to put them into perspective when compared with the highest-paid male athletes. For scale, Forbes reported that soccer player Christiano Ronaldo is the highest-paid athlete in the world, earning a whopping $260 million in 2024. The second highest-paid athlete on Forbes’s list is Spanish golfer Jon Rahm, whose income clocks in at $218 million.
Clearly, Coco Gauff, and all the women athletes on this list, are doing fine. But it appears that in sports, the gender pay gap has about a $226 million difference.
