Lauren Jackson says low pay in women's basketball forces players to over-extend themselves to make a living.

By Jon Healy

Retired Australian basketball star Lauren Jackson says female basketball players are caught in an unfortunate cycle, making gender inequality in the sport a tough nut to crack.

Even in the United States, Jackson told 7.30 the difference in terms of salaries is “unbelievable” and the issue, even for top players like the three-time WNBA MVP, is becoming something of a self-fulfilling prophecy.

The 34-year-old said, as a result of getting paid less, female athletes are forced to play all year round and all around the world in order to make a comfortable living, leading to more career-threatening injuries.

“That’s the problem with women’s sport and why we all get injured and hurt is because we have to play 12 months a year so we can make money to live,” she said just hours after announcing her retirement due to a slew of knee injuries.

“Whereas men, they play one season and they’re good. They can have a break, they can rehab their bodies.

“We just never have time to do it. So that will be good when it changes.”

Between 2007 and 2014, Jackson, despite being “deathly afraid of flying”, split her time between Seattle, Canberra, Russia, Spain, South Korea and China, where she tore her ACL in 2013.

Jackson said men’s and women’s basketball would not attract the same sort of coverage or prestige for “a long time”.

“I’m not sure in my lifetime we’re ever going to be equitable with the men’s game, we’re ever going to make anywhere near what the men make,” she said.

‘Women have to sacrifice a lot to become professional athletes’

The four-time Olympian forced herself to play through debilitating injuries and put on hold a number of goals, like finishing university and having children in a career spanning almost 20 years.

“Women have to sacrifice a lot to become professional athletes,” she said.

“They can’t just have babies, get married, have children, and then come back and play. And I think that’s something that is hard.

“Men, they don’t have to really worry about that. I want to have kids, so I’m excited about that part.”

One of Jackson’s Opals team-mates, Abby Bishop, was forced to quit the Opals in 2014 over a childcare dispute.

Bishop has full-time custody of her sister’s child, Zala, and Basketball Australia (BA) ruled she would have to pay for the flights, accommodation and childcare on tours.

After lengthy negotiations, Bishop rejoined the squad late last year, saying: “They’re definitely going to help me in some kind of way, whether that’s flights or paying for my nanny.

“[Zala] will always come first, but I’m just really happy, and I guess respectful of Basketball Australia for re-evaluating it.”

It was not the first time the sport’s governing body in Australia has faced accusations pertaining to gender bias.

BA was also left red-faced after flying the men’s team to the London Olympics in business class, while the women flew economy.

A gender-neutral travel policy has since been instated.

“It was a pretty easy one to rectify,” BA chief executive Anthony Moore said.

“We get a significant amount of taxpayers’ money … so I think the average man and woman in the street would believe that we would apply those funds equally when it comes to matters such as travel.”

This post originally appeared on ABC News.