ARSENAL

beat Manchester City to win their fifth WSL Cup on Wednesday night. The attendance, for one of the biggest matches of the season, was 2,136. There is a lot of talk about gender wage parity in football, but it comes from a flawed perspective. The comparison is not with male teams from Arsenal or Manchester City, because how can a group drawing several thousand for a cup final be paid the weekly salaries of £200,000 that are financed and justified by the reach and wealth of the Premier League? Yet if Steph Houghton of Manchester City can earn roughly £70,000 annually, that bears ballpark comparison to the salaries in League Two, where a club such as Crawley Town have average gates of 2,081. The parity is not in the name of the club, or where they sit in the league, but their commercial potential. If the crowds and commerce rise, so will wages in the women’s game: it really is that simple.