The women footballers who SHOULD be paid more than men
Even before the failed drugs test there was no doubt who was the better tennis player out of Serena Williams and Maria Sharapova. They have met 21 times and Williams has won 19 matches. november 15, 2004, at the WTA Tour Championships in Los Angeles was Sharapova’s last victory, since when she has lost 18 straight to Williams, taking just three sets off her in 12 years.
Yet for the last decade, factoring in sponsorship and commercial contracts as well as prize money, Sharapova has out-earned Williams every year. So pay in sport is unfair.
Ordinary lower-league footballers will make more over a career than many Olympic gold medallists. every two years, when an Olympics comes around, we hear tales of hardship and strife from people with stunning athletic ability.
That’s just the way the world is. The cheapest form of celebrity will always pay more than nursing.
So, strictly speaking, the USA women’s football team are appropriately rewarded for their success, with medals and trophies: three World Cups and four Olympic golds. nothing beyond that is guaranteed.
The reason five of the team are taking action against US Soccer, their governing body, is that considering the going rate, nothing is pretty much what they have been getting. A contract to play for the US women pays £30,000. The US men’s team receive £48,000.
It is not even a matter of resources, as revenue from the women’s team amounts to £14million more than their male counterparts.
It is old-fashioned sexism, plain and simple. Jeffrey Kessler, a member of the legal team mounting the action, called it the ‘strongest case of discrimination against women athletes in violation of law that I have ever seen’ — and while he has a vested interest, that doesn’t mean he’s wrong.
The justification of pay disparity in sport is that men and women do not perform the same job or generate equivalent revenue.
A team that has to be subsidised cannot command the same salary as one that creates profits.
Yet the usual rules do not apply here. US Soccer has been taking advantage of an historic inequality that is unjustifiable. The US women deserve at least as much as the men, and probably more. If they are the biggest draw, they get the biggest bucks: that’s the way this system works.
The danger is that America’s women are seen as more than an anomaly. That obvious unfairness is falsely interpreted as rightful precedent, opening the way for other suits in other countries, in other disciplines.
nothing will strangle the growth of women’s sport faster than a sudden escalation of costs. In many cases, clubs and administrative bodies run women’s teams at a loss, as a way of establishing foundations. If the losses become too great, that support will quickly be scaled down.
The figures for FIFA’s women’s World Cup in 2011 show a profit in the region of £6m. Yet there are now complaints that the tournament winners receive substantially inferior prize-money to the men.
The victorious United States women collected £1.4m in 2015, against the £24.5m received by Germany’s men in 2014. even America’s men took home £6.3m for a last-16 finish that summer. Clearly, however, if the women’s champions were rewarded equally — let alone the teams eliminated in earlier rounds — the World Cup would run at a huge loss.
In the current financial climate, would FIFA still support it? It is the same at cricket’s World Twenty20. The prize money for the men’s event is 16 times that for the women’s competition — a difference of £1.1m to £70,000.
Yet even at the semi-final stage the women’s event was sparsely attended. It is the reason that Clare Connor, director of women’s cricket at the eCB, describes equal pay as an ‘absurd proposition’.
As recently as 2013, the ICC were still subsidising the women’s game to the tune of £5m. If an additional £10m then had to be provided, to reward the winners of matches played to rows of bare seats, there might not be a women’s Twenty20 at all. Well, not one like this.
A sponsor could be found and the tournament made self-sufficient, but it wouldn’t have the scope of the ICC’s version, smartly bundled with the men in a television package that affords the women’s game a profile it would not enjoy independently.
Much women’s cricket remains unrefined. Mark Robinson, head coach of england’s women, denounced his team’s fitness in India and in this raw state the game will not attract large audiences — just as amateur club rugby looked too messy to draw the crowds we now see. Without the numbers in the stands, the numbers on the cheques won’t tally.
We have to be realistic about what can be achieved. The ICC’s daily living allowance for players is now equal, but travel expenses are not. Men and women turn in different directions at the cabin door. Yet to place all women’s teams in business class, like the men, equates to a further £300,000 — and it is money that women’s cricket does not have. To ignore financial imperatives could lead to a painful reckoning for women’s sport. A rogue ruling on prize money or wages could bankrupt it. The US women deserve their day in court, but they cannot be considered representative. equality is the fine and just ambition but, right now, some teams are more equal than others.