Many goals ahead as inequality a bugbear in women’s football
Women’s soccer is gaining in popularity, but is an arena for prejudice in the US. Dr Cherrie Short explains
MORE than one billion people watched the 2019 Fifa Women’s World Cup soccer tournament in Paris this past July, the largest audience for a women’s sporting event in history.
The US Women’s National Team (USWNT) won the World Cup in 2019 for the fourth time, out of the eight times the tournament has been held since its inception in 1991. Why are the American women so dominant in soccer and why is this sport such a growing global success for women?
My husband’s daughter, Lisa, began playing soccer in primary school in the United States along with many of her classmates. Her opportunity to play soccer stemmed in part from a civil rights law passed in 1972 under the Higher Education Act known as Title IX.
This law requires that any federally funded educational institution not discriminate on the basis of sex. It has had a profound impact on female employment in educational institutions, as well as on sexual harassment and sexual abuse processes and convictions.
But despite political opposition, the law also covered the controversial area of athletics, requiring parity with males in sports teams and athletic opportunities for females.
The impact has been dramatic: Since 1972, according to a study completed in 2006, the increase in the number of girls participating in athletics in high school has increased ninefold, while the number of women participating in college sports has increased by 450%.
A 2008 study showed that women’s college sports have grown to more than 9,100 teams, or 8.6 per school. The three top women’s sports in high school and college are: basketball, with 98% of schools having a team; volleyball, with 95%; and soccer at 92%. It has led to the “soccer mom” depiction of many American mothers, spending their time taking their daughters (and sons) to soccer tournaments.
Yet Title IX’s impact went far beyond education to the development of professional women’s sports
teams and a changing culture of the role of female athletes. The amazing success of the USWNT has also spurred several other countries, including in Asia and Europe, to develop women’s soccer programs, leading to remarkable growth in skill, talent and viewership for women’s soccer worldwide. Other Fifa Women’s World Cup winners are Germany, Japan, and Norway.
While the global success of women’s soccer is remarkable, there is still a long was to go in creating parity with male teams and athletes. One major issues is the long-standing pay inequality for female athletes.
Three months before leaving for France, 28 members of the American women’s national team sued the US Soccer Federation in federal court, seeking pay and working conditions equitable to what the federation gives the men’s national team. The two sides are expected to enter mediation soon, with the lawyers for the women arguing that the duties and responsibilities of a national team player aren’t different based on gender.
Their argument is strong. The women will get bonuses about five times less from the federation than the men would have earned for winning the World Cup. And despite the women’s soccer team generating more revenue than the men’s team for the past three years, according to audited financial statements from US Soccer, female players continue to earn 38 cents for every dollar that male players make.
The US Soccer Federation’s chief communications officer, Neil Buethe, said the federation and the USWNT are now moving toward mediation. Given the amount of public support and political pressure, there’s very little chance the US Women don’t emerge with pay equal to the US men through arbitration.
Pay equality is the latest step in an ongoing and very slow walk toward gender equality within the industry. And while the fact that women continue to make less money than men for the same job seems outdated, institutions continue to uphold the systemic inequality.
The US Senate, for one, has failed to pass the Paycheck Fairness Act, and the majority of American businesses continue to pay women 21% less than men. Nationally, women in America continue to struggle with equal pay, with women making 80 cents for every dollar a man makes. In fact, between 2009 and 2018 the gender wage gap has only closed by five cents. In many ways, these larger social structures, and inherent social cues, are driving the current conversation for the women’s soccer team.
While no-one is denying that the women’s performance is spectacular, many people, and especially men, are saying that the women’s game isn’t as popular or profitable, which fundamentally drives pay.
This is indeed the leading counterargument to the women’s lawsuit. The US federation disputes the lawsuit and attributes any differences in pay to “aggregate revenue generated by the different teams and/or any other factor other than sex”.
However, not taken into account is that these revenue figures are shifting. While historically the men’s team has generated more money, recently the women’s games have gained more opportunity, attention and wins, and increasingly generate more profit for the industry.
The federation should take note of this trend and do more to further promote and market their female teams, rather than use outdated data to say women should continue to earn less.
The fact that the world’s elite female athletes make just 38% of what their male counterparts make while achieving greater heights of success is strikingly prejudiced.
The key question is whether a federal judge, jury or mediator, sorting through soccer’s intricate web of contracts, bonuses, sponsorship deals, and Fifa rules, will reach the same conclusion.
This argument is part of a larger issue within the country and in many parts of the world, and it is exciting to see the dramatic success of women’s soccer pushing forward equality in pay and working conditions for women, hopefully not only in the US, but in the UK and around the world.