If we want equality for women, as I assume all of us do, it does no good to do demand equal pay while also demanding a separate organizational structure.
Any woman soccer player has the opportunity to earn as much as men do. She simply has to compete against men and earn a spot on the men’s team, as there is no restriction on women playing there. Only the reverse is true–men cannot play on the women’s team.
Women athletes can be extremely talented. But testosterone is a powerful drug, and it gives men superior strength that simply cannot be matched by women. The best women cannot beat the best men in running, soccer, tennis, etc. The Williams sisters once claimed they could beat any male tennis player outside the top 200. A male player ranked #203 with a sprained ankle competed against them, and beat Serena Williams 6-1, and then immediately beat Venus 6-2. We need to let go of the fantasy that elite men and women athletes are equal. They are not.
Instead we should celebrate women’s athletics, and be glad that they have a separate organization that highlight their talents. The alternative would be to get rid of sex restrictions altogether, and have a single team that has the best players. in that case no women would make the elite teams. Who wants that?
But once you are at the point where you have to have a women’s only team, you have to consider the finances. In college, numeric equality is mandated through Title IX. But outside of college, the free market takes over. A recent men’s world cup generated $6B in revenue, and about 7% of that went to the players. The corresponding women’s world cup generated $131M, and about 25% went the players.
Equality in pay while having gender separated teams will never happen when the revenue streams are so different. The math simply doesn’t work.
Also, the women’s team isn’t boosting their support by allowing Megan Rapinoe on the team. Sports used to be an escape from politics, but she has ruined that.
Just read that WaPo opinion piece and find it full of holes in logic.
“Just imagine how that record-setting 13-0 victory over Thailand will play at a jury trial. It’s going to be a lot of fun watching lawyers for the soccer federation try to justify why the U.S. women’s national team…”
Sure, the USA team is great but just proves there isn’t a lot of great competition in women’s soccer right now. What makes soccer (or any sport) fun to watch is COMPETITION, TIGHT COMPETITION combined with skill. At this point in history, men’s soccer provides that more. I honestly don’t find 13-0 routs and excess celebration give the ease with which goals were scored fun to watch.
“You think Fox and ESPN got into a bidding war for the English language rights to the 2018 and 2022 World Cups all for a men’s squad that gets whipped by Venezuela?”
Nope, they aren’t bidding for english language rights for the USA men’s squad. They’re bidding for english language rights for the opportunity to show the World Cup in english - the most spoken language in the world, to provide coverage for the most popular sport in the world. They know most soccer fans in the USA aren’t tuning in to watch the stinky USA men’s team. We’re tuning in to watch stellar soccer - every single match we can watch. And because of that, advertising revenue is super high and profitable.
Folks need to disconnect the revenue stream for men’s World Cup soccer, even here in the USA, from the men’s USA team. They are two separate things. Championship payouts are decided on by FIFA. FIFA gets much, much, much more revenue from men’s World Cup than women’s.
On the other hand, the female players have every right to challenge the status quo and fight for more pay. I just don’t think the revenue streams can be completely ignored. I also think FIFA’s leadership has proven time and again to be untrustworthy. Let’s put some women on that team!
I’ve copied and pasted from a soccer forum I read, which adds some interesting points to the discussion, I think:
I love my daughters and love watching the world cup but am I the only one sick of seeing equal pay mentioned on every broadcast and in every article? I support equal pay in a business environment where my kid should be paid the same amount for the same work but as awesome as the womens national team is, even my daughter doesn’t think they deserve equal pay.
She did a school project on this last month. Some interesting data point I remember:
-on Fox womens national team games average 60k viewers while men avg 240k viewers
-the last womens final brought Fox $17m while mens final brought $530m
-FIFA generated $4.5b in direct revenue for last mens wc while women brought FIFA $300m
-when Lifetime TV invested in NWSL and started airing game of the week on Sat, ratings dropped from 300k for show/movie repeats they were running to less than 20k for live games. Ratings dropped so bad they killed ratings for Lifetime shows later in the day and they stopped airing games and had to write off their investments
-in the last winter olympics, bobsledding, curling, and biathlon had higher ratings than all group stage games in last womens wc
Also she found that women already make more. They get 13% of wc revenue from us soccer compared to 9% for men.
We love watching the games but even my girl who is a strong independent badass who can go toe to toe with any boy gets pissed off when people talk about equal pay for female players. This debate weakens the equal pay arguement elsewhere… like in the business world where women do DESERVE to be paid equally (or comparably)
A different post, replying to the 1st:
These points have all been made public yet the general public doesn’t see it that way. Perception is reality to them - the women win, the men don’t. But the team contracts are in part based on revenues not just wins. They already get bonuses for wins. If they want a new compensation structure then negotiate a new one. The team took it to court because they knew it would win in the court of public opinion. It may not win legally.
That said, when it comes to things like equal travel, more grass games instead of turf etc there is no excuse for not giving the women the same things.
@hebegebe Interestingly I was just having a similar discussion with my 15 year old son last night. As our society moves towards non-gender based athletics is where the move will be the most difficult to implement. Gender identity is relatively simple for a society to manage with respect to most aspects of life (restrooms, pronouns) outside of the political/religious stances however athletics gets complicated.
The only real way to level the playing field (pun intended) in terms of gender identity is to eliminate gender as a consideration, across the board, as everyone should be treated equally, regardless of gender identity. To do this in sports would mean to have one team or event open to all, to continue to have male/female based teams or events would ignore those with other gender identities (non-binary, gender fluid, etc.).
Our discussion was around Title IX and how that would essentially become mute should gender essentially be “thrown out”. If our educational systems become non-gender based there is no need for Title IX as gender is no longer an identifier. If it were determined that Title IX was still applicable it would have to expand to include all gender identities. Again this would be relatively easy to achieve in the classroom but not so much in the world of athletics. Would schools suddenly have to provide equivalent opportunities to all of the myriad of gender identities, not just female to male? Would we start to see an NCAA non-binary basketball tournament? It gets very murky very quickly.
Somehow, I don’t think that Rapinoe was even alive in 1936, when Jesse Owens’ participation in, and winning medals in, the 1936 Olympics in Berlin generated political chatter. Or 1948, when a Major League Baseball team hired Jackie Robinson.
There’s always some excuse why women are paid less than men. Why are female tennis players paid less? Not because people don’t like watching Serena Williams.
Could the gender pay equality/gender disparity in sports achievement conversation be its own thread so we could talk about the Women’s World Cup tournament?
“There’s always some excuse why women are paid less than men. Why are female tennis players paid less? Not because people don’t like watching Serena Williams.”
Might not be the best example.
“Since the start of tennis’ professional era in 1968, the prize money at the French Open has not only skyrocketed, but women also achieved prize money parity in 2006. It was the third major tournament to offer equal pay, behind the U.S. Open, which did so in 1973, and the Australian Open, which did so in 2001. Wimbledon followed suit a year later, achieving pay parity in 2007.”
Marta has been around forever. She seemed old when she played here in the SF Bay Area in 2010 for the FC Gold Pride.
I was looking at whether tape the game to be televised at Noon today, but decided to pass on China vs. South Africa. Honestly, other the the USA games, it’s hard to get really excited for the bulk of these group games.
Alternatively, I could restrict the thread to game talk.
I’m not going to do that, but I will say that discussion of pay equality / Title IX needs to be a separate conversation. The posts on this thread need to be tangentially related to World Cup / FIFA / USWNT. and the common thread is not simply women.
So discussion of Hope Solo’s criticisms of the current team’s most recent goal celebrations would be OK. Serena Williams? Not so much
@“Youdon’tsay” Yep, that was dripping with irony. Besides the husband beating incident, when she was benched in a 2007 WC game, she went all scorched Earth (criticized) both her then coach, Greg Ryan, and teammate, Briana Scurry, the 2nd string goalie who started and played the entire game. All class!
I’m not a soccer fan, but will watch the World Cup. One thing that turned me off when watching the men’s games was that flopping seemed to be part of the strategy. Is that also part of the women’s game?
