Andreas Papoutsis’ article is additionally featured in The Generation’s Spring 2022 Digital Print Edition: Women. Coming June 1st 2022.
There is still much more work ahead to achieve gender equality in the world of soccer. In the United States alone, more than 70% of professional soccer athletes are men, one of several indications that suggest participation among amateurs and youth can be hardly close to even among genders.1 For women looking to enter the sport, whether it be in the grand pursuit of a professional career or merely for leisurely purposes, a stark difference in pay rates for men’s and women’s national teams is a head scratcher considering the sport’s reputation as a game that welcomes egalitarianism.
The debate for equal pay reared its head most forcefully in the United States, with stars such as Megan Rapinoe advocating on behalf of female athletes everywhere, only to be met with harsh criticism from certain factions of the American public. After years of activism and drawn-out legal proceedings, courts in the United States ruled that the national soccer federation must pay both teams, regardless of gender, equally for representing their country in international competition.
Where does the United States stand in terms of progress on the matter? The agreement to offer equal pay to female athletes made the United States just the eighth country to enact such a policy, joining Ireland, Australia, the Netherlands, Norway, New Zealand, England, and Brazil. FIFA officially recognizes 168 different women’s soccer federations, meaning only 3.5% of female professionals representing their countries earn the same pay as men. In fact, FIFA recognizes 211 men’s soccer federations, meaning entire regions only have infrastructure and pathways to international athletic competition and recognition for men.
Of the other seven countries that beat the United States in the race to offer female athletes equal pay, many of them have been known to afford women more equality in several aspects of life beyond soccer. In the U.S. News and World Report rankings of the best countries for women to live in, Norway checks in at third, the Netherlands at fifth, New Zealand at eighth, Australia at 10th, Ireland at 13th, England at 14th, and Brazil in 42nd, whereas the United States checks in at 18th.2 With that being said, there seems to be a pretty direct correlation in determining which countries are most likely to offer equal pay to female soccer players, which is bad news for the current state of affairs since many of the world’s countries lag distantly behind in women’s rights. Since living standards for women typically correlate with a country having more infrastructure for women’s athletics, it is therefore all the more concerning that the United States, which is in the top 10% in terms of the rankings, falls so far behind in providing women with access to the same sporting opportunities it provides its men. In other countries where women experience even more unfavorable standards of living, their access to sports like soccer is restricted to an exponentially larger degree. The gross lack of sports infrastructure for women across the world is also a direct harm to women’s standard of living. A Rasmussen poll found that 82% of American parents viewed sports as important to the development of their children.3 Without equal access to opportunities across sports, many young girls are robbed of crucial development opportunities that are abundantly afforded to their male counterparts.
Outside of the global north, women’s access to the sport is often far more reduced. In 2013, Uganda’s government pulled its U-20 women’s soccer team from world cup qualification matches because of a supposed lack of funds.4 If the men’s team were in a position to contend for a spot in the World Cup, it is difficult to imagine that the government wouldn’t have done more on their behalf. In Iran, women face substantial barriers in accessing the sport where Muslim clerics have often dictated that women should not even be allowed to attend games, making it substantially more difficult for the sport to grow among the female population. Only recently have women been allowed into stadiums, while women competing for the national team often face hostility and discrimination that transcends the issue of equal pay.5 Khalida Popal, a woman who sought to create women’s soccer leagues in Afghanistan, was forced to seek asylum in Denmark after receiving countless extremist threats.6 In Brazil, it wasn’t until 1979 that women’s soccer was even legally sanctioned; cultural narratives up until that point suggested the sport was incompatible with “female nature”.7 In countless other countries across the world, women face extensive cultural (and oftentimes legal) barriers to access a sport that derives its beauty from being accessible to humans from all walks of life.
On the domestic level, pay discrepancies can be even more severe. Even in the United States, a sizable amount of professional female soccer players are paid no higher the poverty line. The minimum six-month salary for a woman competing professionally in the NASL is $6,842 whereas the poverty line in the United States is demarcated at $11,880 per individual. A blue-collar worker earning minimum wage would generate more than some female professional soccer players. Such low salaries understandably reduce interest in the sport and foment a discriminatory environment for prospective female athletes. For context, the minimum salary in Major League Baseball is $500,000 per year. The lack of fair pay at the club level only amplifies the harsh effects of financial discrimination seen at the international level. For the women have been able to break through such pervasive cultural and legal barriers to earn selections to their national teams (assuming their country sanctions one), and represent their nations in the World Cup Finals, they too find themselves at a great pay disadvantage to their male counterparts. In the men’s World Cup, competing teams fight for their share of a prize pot of roughly $400 million, while the women’s teams are forced to scrap for a pot of just $30 million.8
In the United States, however, the women’s national soccer team generated more revenue than their male counterparts, strengthening their argument for equal pay from both an ethical and economic perspective. In 2016, US Women’s soccer generated revenue of $50.8 million in comparison to $49.9 million produced by their male counterparts. If anything, it’s confounding that they aren’t paid more than their male counterparts.9 The counterargument to the equal pay initiative suggests that women athletes should earn pay equivalent to the size of the fiscal market associated with their sport, and since female sports don’t generate nearly the same revenue as male sports, they should not be paid equally. The 2018 men’s World Cup Final brought in over 1.1 billion television viewers.10 The women’s World Cup final, by comparison, drew in a total of 263.6 million viewers. While the women’s numbers might fall short in comparison, they are by no means anything to scoff at. Over the course of the entire women’s World Cup, roughly 414 million viewers tuned in. The UCLA-Gonzaga Final Four thriller, by comparison, saw about 15 million viewers. It speaks to the immense growth of women’s sports and the cultural revolution that has taken place, albeit too slowly in most places and at a snail’s pace in other areas.
The economic argument, however, must be interpreted in context. Men’s sports typically do, on average, generate far higher viewership than women’s sports. But women’s sports also suffer from a lack of exposure to several media markets. When UCLA women’s basketball squared off against UConn in the first ever women’s basketball game broadcast on ABC, they broke the record for the most-viewed regular season women’s college basketball game of all time. The match brought in 839,000 viewers, which was 302,000 more than the amount who tuned in for a top ten men’s matchup between Villanova and Baylor the following day. Villanova and Baylor are two of the most venerated programs currently in men’s college basketball; to eclipse their viewership ratings by a wide margin speaks to the potential women’s sports possesses. Hence the economic argument should be understood in the context of inequitable exposure to media markets. When women’s sports are broadcasted on television and advertised across different mediums, they generally have no problem in attracting fans or viewers.
I would suggest that the ethical argument trumps the economic argument anyway.
Representing your country should not be viewed differently on the basis of gender. It takes immense sacrifice on the part of female athletes to represent their nations at the highest levels of the sport, and the message sent by paying them woefully less than their male counterparts is deeply damaging to young girls and young women seeking to pursue a career or even a hobby in soccer.
What can be done to remedy the problem? That would require a complex solution, since the issue of gender inequality is one that transcends soccer and intersects nearly every fabric of society. But the easiest first step that can be taken is for other soccer federations to follow the lead of countries like Australia and guarantee equal pay to female athletes who represent their country at international soccer competitions. FIFA should also step in and incentivize federations to make equal pay a hallmark of their governing structure. One such way to do so could involve penalizing countries that are clearly apathetic to the notion of gender equality, whether that be through financial penalties or outright bans from male competitions until some verifiable progress is shown that a given national federation is taking steps to ensure a more equal landscape for a sport that prides itself on equality. If a country’s soccer federation refuses to pay women equally for their service in competition, perhaps their men’s teams should not be afforded access to the glory of competition either.
The beauty of the sport lies in its ability to not discriminate across socioeconomic spectrums. That same equality should be demonstrated across genders.
Endnotes
1.“Professional Soccer Player Demographics and Statistics in the US,” Zippia. https://www.zippia.com/professional-soccer-player-jobs/demographics
2.“Best Countries for Women,” U.S. News and World Report. https://www.usnews.com/news/best-countries/best-countries-for-women
3.“Americans Say Sports Are Important For Kids,” Rasmussen Reports. July 20, 2017. https://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/lifestyle/sports/july_2017/americans_say_sports_are_important_for_kids
4.Oryada, Andrew. “Uganda Withdraws Team From U-20s Women’s World Cup Qualifiers,” Uganda Radio Network. November 27, 2013. https://ugandaradionetwork.com/a/story.php?s=58478
5.Merhi, Karim Abou. “Women allowed to attend soccer game at Tehran stadium, a first in nearly 3 years,” The Times of Israel. January 27, 2022.
6.Lourim, Jake. “How Close Is The Rest Of The World To Catching The U.S.?” FiveThirtyEight. June 11, 2019. https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/how-close-is-the-rest-of-the-world-to-catching-the-u-s/
7.Ackerman, Xanthe & Asquith, Christina. “Soccer is Still Out of Reach for Half the World’s Women,” Time Magazine. July 8, 2015. https://time.com/3949377/world-cup-women-global-equality/
8.Weber, Joe. “The Status of Equal Pay for Women Soccer Players Worldwide,” Girls Soccer Network. September 22, 2021. https://girlssoccernetwork.com/the-status-of-equal-pay-for-women-soccer/
9.Hess, Abigal Johnson. “US women’s soccer games now generate more revenue than men’s – but the player still earn less,” CNBC. June 19, 2019.
https://www.cnbc.com/2019/06/19/us-womens-soccer-games-now-generate-more-revenue-than-mens.html
10.Glass, Alana. “FIFA Women’s World Cup Breaks Viewership Records,” Forbes. October 21, 2019. https://www.forbes.com/sites/alanaglass/2019/10/21/fifa-womens-world-cup-breaks-viewership-records/?sh=40e6191a1884
