FIFA Women's Soccer: All Work, No Pay

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/07/07/womens-soccer-pay-gap_n_7745892.html

Karly Morgan

The U. S. Women’s National Soccer Team is a dominant force both on the field and in worldwide media. Stars like goalkeeper Hope Solo and field player Alex Morgan have grown to legendary status on the field and celebrity status in the media, and the team continues to gain notoriety as a whole. When the USWNST won the Women’s FIFA World Cup last year, the immediate reaction from fans was celebration. The USWNST had achieved the highest glory in their sport and were bound to be highly rewarded.

Or so we thought.

The total payout for all the teams that participated in the latest Men’s FIFA World Cup was $576 million.

The total payout for the Women’s FIFA World Cup? $15 million.

Just to continue to put this inequality into perspective, a men’s team that loses in the first round of FIFA World Cup play receives $8 million. When the U.S. Women’s National Soccer Team went all the way to the top and won the gold trophy, they received just $2 million.

FIFA has tried to defend itself with the following arguments:

1. Men’s soccer is more popular, so it gets higher ratings and earns itself more money
2. There have been more men’s World Cup tournaments, so it has had more time to gain popularity, importance, and monetary value.

Those arguments were quickly countered and dismantled by fans, the USWNST, and media:

1. The 2015 Women’s FIFA World Cup Final game broke several TV records. It was the most watched soccer game EVER, more than any other men’s, women’s, college, pro, or club game ever televised at any level. It also had more viewers than the NBA Final or Stanley Cup final that year.
2. If FIFA bases lower pay on the fact that there have been fewer Women’s World Cup tournaments, there will never be equal pay, because there will never be as many Women’s FIFA World Cups as there have been men’s FIFA World Cups! It’s as silly a concept as a little sister hoping to “catch” her older brother in age, when they obviously age at the same rate.

It’s the same topic that lies just under the surface of every reading we’ve discussed about women in our Race, Gender, and Media class: the media has a nasty habit of declaring women inferior to men. Usually this inferiority is subliminal, implicit, or embedded into some other message. In this case, however, FIFA can’t hide behind claims of misinterpretation or lack of solid proof: there’s a $561 million dollar inferiority.