Soccer : The Gender Difference

Soccer. It's that game a majority of kids learn to play in school. Almost every Saturday, if you drive or walk by a park it's almost guaranteed you'll see kids in colored and numbered jerseys and knee high socks kicking around a black and white ball across a field. Very few of those kids actually make it into the professional soccer leagues, and even if they did they had another challenge to overcome. The challenge of equal pay between men's and women's professional and national soccer leagues. However that pay difference primarily comes from not only gender discrimination and inequality, but also a time and age difference. The men's team has been around longer than women's teams, meaning they already have a greater viewership.

Most people assume that men and women get paid equally and have been since the women's suffrage movements throughout the world but that's not entirely true. In 1963, the United States passed the Equal Pay Act stating, "... women were to receive equal pay for work that was of 'comparable quality and quantity' to the responsibilities of men."(Equal Pay Act of 1963) This act allowed more women to be paid the same as men for the same amount of work, with a few exceptions. The Equal Pay Act included several clauses that allowed employers to limit how much they were paying their female workers. For example, one clause states that an employer can pay a male employee more than a female employee if the employer can establish a seniority based payment system, a merit system, a system where earnings are based upon the quantity/quality of production of the employees or a differential based upon any other factor other than the sex of the employees.

In a study done by the John Jay College of Criminal Justice titled Differences Between Men and Women in Professional Soccer, it discusses how the U.S.A's Women's Team has an average salary of about $40,000 with a salary cap of $800,000 while the U.S. Men's team has an average salary of $60,000 and essentially no salary cap. That's already a $20,000 average salary difference between the two teams. The Fifa's Men's soccer team earned more from being in the world cup without winning than the women's team did from winning the world cup. Male soccer players are also projected as professionals in sports magazines and news while female soccer players are sexualized and portrayed as objects. For example in two different Sports Illustrated editions, David Beckham (Manchester United, Real Madrid, LA Galaxy) was placed on a red carpet in his uniform with a soccer ball in his hand, while Alex Morgan (Orlando Pride, U.S. Women's National Team) was posed in water and a blue bikini.(John Jay College of Criminal Justice, Differences Between Men and Women in Professional Soccer) Not only is Beckham represented as a professional, but Morgan is not only shown unprofessionally and out of uniform, if you were unaware of who Morgan was there is a very high chance you wouldn't know that she was a professional soccer player.

These problems don't just apply to soccer players within the United States, but to those outside of the country as well. Issues with pay have also occurred in Canada, England, and Australia. The Canadian Women's team earn between $7,200 and $39,700 USD per season which is roughly between $9,545.65 and $5,263.67 Canadian. Though the Canadian men's national team is paid per appearance, the CSA (Canadian Soccer Association) states "due to the very different leagues available for male and female players." (CBC Sports, Canadian Soccer Association Opaque on Women's Pay) The CSA's statement is essentially saying there isn't a strong need to subsidize male players with a salary from CSA because they have more opportunities to land jobs with professional teams. This has also occurred with England's National Women's team and Australia's National Women's team. The Australian women's team has already successfully fought to achieve their pay parity. However England's team is still trying to achieve equal pay. The women's team earns a minimum of £25,000 ( $32,860.13 USD) per year with up to £50,000 ($65,720.25 USD) available through bonuses. Where the top English men's player earns £300,000 ($394,321.50 USD) per week. That's about 52 times greater than the top female players worldwide. However there have been issues with people claiming that the accusations women have made are a "baseless feminist outrage" over the pay inequality between genders. For example the winning men's world cup team earned $38 million in the last world cup while the winning women's team earned about $4 million in cash prizes. That's already a $34 million difference between the winning men's and women's teams. Though the reflection of relative commercial status and the ability to draw a consistent audience also correlate to the amount each team earns. The men's teams are paid higher in top-level soccer because they bring in substantially larger audiences. In the 2018 Men's World Cup there were 3.6 billion viewers with FIFA profiting over $6 billion on that World Cup, where the 2015 Women's World Cup had about 764 million viewers. The differentiation between viewership can be accounted for age. The Women's World Cup was originally created in 1991 while the Men's World Cup began in 1930. That's a 61 year difference between the first Men's World Cup and the first Women's World Cup, so it's logical that the Women's World Cups are neither as well payed or well earning quite yet.

These reasons are all applicable, but it all comes down to generic sexism and the correlation to the time difference between the founding of the two leagues. However with enough time it is highly possible the women's soccer teams will be able to match the men's teams earnings with enough viewership and work. Although there is still sexism in the industry, hopefully that will be worked out too.