Maddie Bishop works a 9-5 job by day, and is a professional women’s ice hockey player by night.

A typical day for Bishop includes waking up at 7:30 a.m., working from 8:30 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. at her day job in South Windsor, Connecticut, going home, eating dinner, leaving her house at 6 p.m., and driving an hour to Danbury where she has practice with the Connecticut Whale of the National Women’s Hockey League until 9:30 p.m. Her day finally ends at 11 p.m. when she arrives back at her house, ready to do it all again tomorrow.

Bishop would rather focus on the sport, but she has to work full-time in order to survive because she can’t make ends meet with her salary as a professional women’s ice hockey player.

"Right now, we can't live off the money we're making, and that's why we all work nine to five jobs," said Bishop, 22, who debuted in the women’s league as a forward during the 2020-2021 season.

In sports, the gender pay gap is incredibly lopsided.

The fight for equal pay in sports has been around for decades, but even after years of conversations and women speaking out on the subject, little has changed.

Women don’t dunk. Men are faster. Men are stronger. These are some of the justifications out there for why women are paid less than men even though they are doing the same job. However, playing the sport has nothing to do with physical ability. In reality, experts say the gender pay gap in sports is the result of underexposure, underinvestment and sexist beliefs that remain at the core of our society.

“Male athletes continue to be paid more than women athletes. It's not because they're better athletes. It's because we have a different value system with men than we do with women,” said LaToya Council, a doctoral candidate in sociology and gender and sexuality studies at the University of Southern California.

For decades, men were viewed as the breadwinners, they went to work and made money in order to support their families while the women stayed at home to cook, clean and take care of the kids. Thus, women were valued less in society.

Today, women are no longer viewed as strictly housewives but when it comes to their roles on the field or the court, women are still undervalued for their time and efforts as athletes.

“The reason why there's this gender pay gap in sports is it speaks to a broader issue of valuing women's time, generally speaking, in paid work and even in unpaid work,” said Council.

As a women’s ice hockey player, Bishop has experienced first-hand what it is like to be underpaid.

The highest paid player in the NWHL made $20,000 during the 20-game long 2020-2021 season. That’s equivalent to earning about $9 per hour, less than minimum wage in most states. Auston Matthews of the Toronto Maple Leafs, the highest paid NHL player, made $16 million.

Jayne Lewis also grew up playing the male-dominated sport. As a 9-year-old, Lewis was playing on a boys team because that was her only option with so few girls playing hockey.

She continued her passion for ice hockey throughout high school and college where she played on the women’s Division I team for Sacred Heart University.

She was drafted into the NWHL by the Metropolitan Riveters in 2019. Lewis also works two jobs as a nanny and club hockey coach in order to survive.

"We're not making the big bucks, we're not making enough to live off of, which is sad, which takes back from our game because people are prioritizing work they have," said Lewis. "The men are working out as their job."

The comparison between the NWHL and NHL is not completely fair.

The NWHL was founded in 2015 by Dani Rylan, a former women’s ice hockey player and commissioner of the league. At the time, there were only four teams, naturally dubbed the "Founding Four." They would become the pioneers for professional women’s hockey in North America.

The league began with a miniscule operating budget of only $2.5 million. Although the league has grown, player salaries have not.

The NWHL has an average salary of $15,000, with a salary cap per team of $150,000. Their male counterparts in the NHL have an average salary of $2.69 million with a salary cap of $81.5 million.

Of course, the NHL has been around for much longer. Of course, it has a larger fan base.

But $15,000 is not a livable wage.

On Dec. 22, 2020, the NWHL and its newly appointed commissioner, Tyler Tumminia, announced that for the first time, women’s professional hockey would be broadcasted on a major TV network.

NBC Sports Network became the home for the NWHL’s 2021 Isobel Cup semifinals and finals, held in Lake Placid, New York, in February.

"It's a huge step in the right direction for not only the NWHL, but it's a huge win for women's hockey overall," said Bishop, whose team made it to the 2021 Isobel Cup semifinals.

The finals on NBCSN drew more than 100,000 viewers. Although the audience was small in comparison to other female sports, such as the WNBA which attracted over 357,000 viewers per game in 2021, it’s a step in the right direction for the 6-year-old league.

"We got the views, we got people to watch, and it just showed how good our athletes are, how determined our athletes are, how dedicated the athletes of the NWHL are, and I think it's just to go up from here," said Bishop.

In late April, the NWHL announced that the teams’ salary cap would double from $150,000 to $300,000 for the 2021-2022 season, creating opportunities for athletes’ salaries to increase.

Ice hockey is hardly an outlier — nearly every sport finds a huge equal pay gap.

Basketball, golf and soccer have some of the largest pay gaps in sports. In 2019, the average NBA player made more than $8.3 million a year. In the same year, the average WNBA salary was $75,181.

Soccer has been one of the most discussed sports in the equal pay conversation for years. In 2016, five U.S. women’s national team members filed a wage discrimnation complaint against the United States Soccer Federation with the goal of combatting the pay disparity.

For three years, nothing changed.

In 2019, the Equal Opportunity Employment Commission gave the players the green light to sue the USSF. On International Women’s Day in 2019, all 28 players sued the soccer federation. To which the organization responded that men are treated better because of their "physical attributes, such as speed and skill."

The U.S. women’s national team has four World Cup titles and four Olympic gold medals. The men’s team has never won a World Cup or a gold medal and still made 62% more than the women in 2019.

In fact, when the USWNT beat the Netherlands 2-0 to win the 2019 FIFA Women’s World Cup, the players earned just $4 million as a team. When France won the 2018 FIFA Men’s World Cup, the players took home a collective $38 million.

Even at the semi-professional soccer level, women are still paid less and aren’t treated as well as the men.

Desarae Felix began playing soccer when she was 10. She played throughout high school and played college soccer at California Baptist University in Riverside. After college, Felix traveled overseas to Spain to pursue a semi-professional soccer career.

"When I went out to Spain, they [the team] would pay for my room and my food, maybe a flight," she added, "at that division, for men, you're getting paid money, plus whatever I was getting."

Desarae Felix wore #23 for California Baptist University (Courtesy of Desarae Felix)

Not only was she paid less, Felix began noticing that the men’s team’s facilities, weight rooms and even athletic trainers were better than the women’s. With her living expenses and miniscule salary, Felix was barely breaking even.

"It's saddening, it's discouraging. For me, I've gone through a little bit of ‘What's the point?’ If I'm not going to be able to make anything," she said. "I have to worry about obviously living and surviving."

The USWNT has not stopped fighting for equal pay. On May 24, Equal Pay Day, President Biden hosted team members Megan Rapinoe and Margaret Purce at the White House to show his support.

"To come out of this crisis and build back better, we need to erase the gender pay gap," Biden said. "Equal pay makes all of us stronger."

For a select few sports, equal pay is no longer a topic of discussion. Throughout the 1970s, iconic tennis player Billie Jean King fought for equal pay at major tournaments. By 2007, four major grand slam events –– the U.S. Open, Australian Open, French Open and Wimbledon — all offered equal prize money.

Since 2004, the International Volleyball Federation has awarded equal prize money to both male and female athletes.

The World Surfing League announced in 2018 that men and women would be paid the same amount of prize money in all events from 2019 on, becoming the first and only U.S. based global sports league to achieve pay equality.

Perhaps tennis, volleyball and surfing have made advances because the players show more skin.

"When women were featured in sports, in the 80s or 90s, when we first did the study, there was this hyper sexualization of women's bodies, focusing on short skirts," said Council.

Athletes do not have a choice as to what uniform they can wear when playing their sport. Volleyball players wear short shorts, tennis players wear dresses and skirts and surfers wear bathing suits.

Baseball players wear tight pants and men’s soccer players wear short shorts, but no one is sexualizing them for what they wear. Fans pay more attention to their athletic ability than their bodies. Women are constantly judged and sexualized based on their bodies and outfits, in a way that could overshadow their athletic ability.

Golf has one of the largest pay gaps in sports. Men on the PGA tour make an average of $1.2 million a year. Women on the LPGA tour make an average of $141,428. The highest paid golfer, Justin Thomas, has made $5.7 million so far in 2021. Lydia Ko, the highest paid woman this year made $861,377.

Morgan Pressel grew up playing golf. At 12 years old, she became the youngest player to qualify for the U.S. Women's Open. Pressel has been playing on the LPGA tour for 16 years and has two LPGA Tour wins and a major championship.

Presell considers herself fortunate that she is able to make a living playing professional golf, but knows that is not the case for everyone.

"Expenses are very high. We travel all around the world. We have caddies and coaches. If you want to be at the top of the game, you have to put some kind of investment in your own game … And to think that there's that much of a pay gap is just astounding," said Pressel.

As a long time player and current broadcast personality, Pressel wants to see more investment in ladies golf in hopes that more exposure and viewership will lead to equal pay in the future.

"The biggest thing that we need to focus on is gaining viewership." She added, "our product is fantastic, the players are just as talented as any male professional and yes don't hit it as far, but there's so much else to the game than distance."

Throughout the pandemic, female sports viewership was at an all-time high. In 2020, the WNBA season viewership increased by 68% and the National Women’s Soccer League 2020 Challenge Cup jumped up 493% from 2019. The LPGA’s viewership increased by 21% .