Like come­di­an Rod­ney Dan­ger­field, women’s ath­let­ics have not his­tor­i­cal­ly got­ten a lot of respect, par­tic­u­lar­ly when viewed in light of men’s sports. While some female ath­letes have cer­tain­ly inked lucra­tive endorse­ment deals on par with their male coun­ter­parts, their poten­tial reach as influ­encers has nev­er­the­less been more lim­it­ed.

Beyond sim­ply the women’s World Cup vic­to­ry, a num­ber of recent events have put female ath­letes – and women’s issues – square­ly in the nation­al spot­light. Does this mean we’re at a moment when female ath­letes are on the verge of wield­ing more mar­ket­ing pow­er?

Here’s a roundup of recent events that might indi­cate an affir­ma­tive.

1. The U.S. Women’s World Cup Broadcast

The 2015 women’s World Cup final was the most-watched soc­cer game in U.S. tele­vi­sion his­to­ry – and that includes men’s match­es – with a report­ed 26.7 mil­lion view­ers.

2. #IWillWhatIWant and #PrincipalMisty

Bal­let dancer Misty Copeland’s pow­er­ful I Will What I Want video for Under Armour has 8.9 mil­lion views to date. What’s more, after her recent pro­mo­tion to prin­ci­pal dancer in the Amer­i­can Bal­let The­atre, the brand asked con­sumers to con­grat­u­late her by tweet­ing with #Prin­ci­palMisty, say­ing it would send flow­ers for each tweet. Per Top­sy, this effort gen­er­at­ed about 1,000 men­tions, which the brand used to cre­ate addi­tion­al con­tent.

.@mistyonpointe, the stage is yours. A big encore ? from your fans & #UAFam­i­ly. We’re so proud. #Prin­ci­palMisty pic.twitter.com/Es8ZVFEJDQ

— Under Armour (@UnderArmour) July 2, 2015

What’s more, super­mod­el Giselle Bund­chen’s turn in the I Will What I Want cam­paign was just award­ed a Cyber Grand Prix at Cannes.

3. Branded Girl Power

Let’s not for­get the enor­mous­ly suc­cess­ful girl pow­er mes­sag­ing from brands like Always and Dove. Their #LikeA­Girl and Real Beau­ty Sketch­es videos have 58.5 mil­lion and 66.1 mil­lion views, respec­tive­ly.

4. #TheNew10

There’s also increased nation­al focus on the gen­der pay gap in part as a result of the recent announce­ment from Trea­sury Sec­re­tary Jacob Lew that the $10 bill will be redesigned in 2020 – to coin­cide with the 100th anniver­sary of the 19th amend­ment – and it will fea­ture a “notable woman.”

The cam­paign for #TheNew10, which, per Top­sy has gen­er­at­ed about 30,000 tweets in the last 30 days, is get­ting addi­tion­al atten­tion as a result of orga­ni­za­tions like the Amer­i­can Asso­ci­a­tion of Uni­ver­si­ty Women, which are call­ing for con­sumers to use the #TheNew10 move­ment to fight for fair pay.

The FIFA Pay Gap

But this doesn’t nec­es­sar­i­ly add up to sweep­ing change, either broad­ly in terms of Amer­i­can cul­ture or specif­i­cal­ly with­in the mar­ket­ing indus­try.

To wit: Not even the U.S. women’s soc­cer team is immune from the pay gap: They received $2 mil­lion from FIFA as a result of their 5–2 win over Japan on July 5, where­as the 2014 men’s cham­pi­onship team from Ger­many received $35 mil­lion and the U.S. men’s team, which was elim­i­nat­ed in the round of 16, received $8 mil­lion.

While it stands to rea­son star Car­li Lloyd will receive plen­ty of endorse­ment offers, mar­ket­ing experts still say it’s unlike­ly female ath­letes are going to become more influ­en­tial in sports mar­ket­ing any time in the imme­di­ate future.

Today’s Bankable Athletes

The high­est paid female ath­lete in 2015 is ten­nis star Maria Shara­po­va, who earned $27.1 mil­lion over­all includ­ing $23 mil­lion in endorse­ments, accord­ing to Forbes. That includes deals with brands like Avon, Sam­sung, Tag Heuer and Evian, mak­ing her 26th on Forbes’ list of the 100 high­est-paid ath­letes over­all.

The only oth­er woman on the list is anoth­er ten­nis pow­er­house: Ser­e­na Williams. She ranks 47th, with $11.6 mil­lion in salary/winnings and $13 mil­lion in endorse­ments from brands like Chase, Aude­mars Piguet, Gatorade and Pep­si­Co.

Female Athletes as Storytellers: What Marketers Need to Know

Oth­er than it sim­ply being a man’s world, why are there only two female names on this list? If it’s gen­uine­ly about prod­uct and influ­encer fit in mar­ket­ing, sure­ly there are female ath­letes who can help tell effec­tive brand sto­ries, too? Why don’t we see more of them? And what do brands need to know/do about work­ing with them?

Mary Scott, pres­i­dent of sports and expe­ri­en­tial for mar­ket­ing agency Unit­ed Enter­tain­ment Group, said more women are becom­ing part of the mar­ket­ing mix, which is typ­i­cal around events like the Olympics and the World Cup, but there isn’t a mon­u­men­tal shift at this moment.

“Some of the stars of World Cup will see addi­tion­al part­ner­ships, espe­cial­ly Car­li,” Scott said. “Unfor­tu­nate­ly, the sus­tain­able expo­sure of these ath­letes is lim­it­ed beyond the win­dows of their com­pe­ti­tion peri­od, which plays into mar­ketabil­i­ty fac­tors. Although social media land­scape has changed this dynam­ic, women in sports still have a ways to go.”

Mark Fidel­man, founder of sports mar­ket­ing com­pa­ny FanZeal, agrees that while women are gain­ing momen­tum, there is a lot of room to grow.

“Inter­est is there, but brands need to be shown how female ath­letes can move the nee­dle rel­a­tive to their male coun­ter­parts,” Fidel­man said. “Most brands are still look­ing at TV audi­ence as the gauge to whether to engage a female ath­lete ver­sus a male ath­lete.”

Accord­ing to Fidel­man, what brands are miss­ing is the tremen­dous pres­ence female ath­letes have on social.

“Online, male ath­letes don’t have a larg­er audi­ence than females,” Fidel­man said. “So, brands need to under­stand how to work with female ath­letes online to dri­ve aware­ness and lead gen­er­a­tion for their audi­ence.”

That includes build­ing sto­ries around ath­letes that have emo­tion­al ele­ments that tie the brand prod­uct to the sto­ry­line, such as Under Armour and Lul­ule­mon do on Insta­gram, which Fidel­man said reg­u­lar­ly fea­ture female ath­letes who are help­ing to tell the brands’ respec­tive sto­ries.

“Female ath­letes have already proven that they can com­mand as large or larg­er fan bases than men, [so] the goal for brands inter­est­ed in sports mar­ket­ing is to learn how to cre­ate an effec­tive sto­ry­line and call to action with that female ath­lete,” Fidel­man said. “But from my per­spec­tive, gen­der is not the issue, it’s prod­uct and influ­encer fit. If a female ath­lete has a bet­ter fit with the brand’s cus­tomers, then by all means, work with that ath­lete.”

For her part, Suzy Sam­mons, brand direc­tor at 180LA, calls ask­ing whether women can become as influ­en­tial as men in mar­ket­ing spon­sor­ships a “cir­cu­lar ref­er­ence.”

“If mar­keters are able to lever­age a true con­nec­tion between a star ath­lete and a brand’s sto­ry, we’re like­ly to cre­ate an effec­tive sphere of influ­ence. Then voila! We’ve con­trolled the des­tiny of women ath­letes who wish to become pow­er­ful voic­es for brands and their copy­writ­ers,” Sam­mons said. “But do mar­keters decide who is an influ­en­tial spokesper­son or does the Amer­i­can con­sumer?”

Fur­ther, she notes brands inter­est­ed in work­ing with ath­letes have to embrace the annu­al gam­ble with the roulette wheel of celebri­ty behav­ior and ath­let­ic suc­cess.

“Is a mem­ber of a pro team a riski­er choice than a suc­cess­ful ath­lete in an indi­vid­ual sport like ten­nis or golf? Prob­a­bly,” she said. “But the fan base is dif­fer­ent. Hmm­mm, what to do? Is gen­der real­ly the first ques­tion mar­keters con­sid­er in this eval­u­a­tion?”

What’s more, Sam­mons points to ath­letes like Williams, as well as her sis­ter Venus, along with ski­er Lind­sey Vonn and soc­cer star Mia Hamm, call­ing them “world-class ath­letes who use their pow­er­ful pres­ence to ignite mean­ing­ful change in the future of people’s lives,” and asks, “Isn’t that more inter­est­ing than a prod­uct launch for Proc­ter & Gam­ble? Do those foun­da­tions make them influ­en­tial? Or does it depend more on our culture’s sports media cov­er­age?”

In the end, Sam­mons said it’s about cel­e­brat­ing the whole sto­ry and the sto­ries behind those sto­ries.

“Spoil­er Alert: men cov­er sports for men. And if women want to ele­vate the aware­ness and demand for seri­ous news about female ath­letes and role mod­els, we need to use the strength of our own key­boards,” Sam­mons said. “New celebri­ties are cre­at­ed every day with social shar­ing: we’re all grass roots.”

What do you think of this take on female ath­letes as brand influ­encers?