Gender Wage Gap in Football - Do "women ride on the coattails of men" in sport?

Former BNP Paribas Open chief executive and tournament director Raymond Moore was forced to resign from his role following comments he made regarding Men/Womens tennis. He said that female tennis players ride of the coattails of their male counterparts (due to the fact that women largely receive equal prize money in tennis despite proof that the men generate more revenue and play longer sets).

The US Women's "soccer" team has filed a wage discrimination suit against the US Soccer Federation. Woman in the US make 40% (presumably on average) of what men do in the US.

Link: http://time.com/money/4277843/us-womens-soccer-equal-pay/

The fact that they have won a bunch of competitions means absolutely nothing. If a badminton team are reigning champions for 10 years they should get paid just as much as tennis players... right?

Surely the MLS generates far more revenue than the men's competition. Furthermore why do they choose to ignore the fact that there is far more competition to even make is professionally in men's football. There are a greater number of semi-professional men who are just as talented. There are plenty of lower league pro footballers who worked just as hard to get there and faced greater competition to do so and get paid less!

Sense of entitlement hiding behind the insincere mask of "equality" yet again if you ask me.

Now I don't deny a wage gap exists in other industries and their certainly is discrimination against women in many workplaces. I just think this is a slap in the face to the US football federation who to me seem to do nothing but pander to women's football and try to promote more interest.

It's a matter of revenues. If the women's league and the men's league made equivalent sums then they should get paid the same, but chances are the men's league makes 10x that amount so they get paid 10x more. If women players want to get paid more then they should improve the product and convince more people to watch. There is nothing inherently sexist about this - except perhaps not allowing talented women to participate in the men's league.

Also a bit ridiculous to use price money as a standard in the article, seeing as how most revenues don't come from there but from viewership, sponsorship, merchandising and ticket sales. Price money is probably a drop in the bucket against that.

BarrileteCosmico wrote:It's a matter of revenues. If the women's league and the men's league made equivalent sums then they should get paid the same, but chances are the men's league makes 10x that amount so they get paid 10x more. If women players want to get paid more then they should improve the product and convince more people to watch. There is nothing inherently sexist about this - except perhaps not allowing talented women to participate in the men's league.

Also a bit ridiculous to use price money as a standard in the article, seeing as how most revenues don't come from there but from viewership, sponsorship, merchandising and ticket sales. Price money is probably a drop in the bucket against that.

I agree with this in that this could be the only reasonable argument for gender discrimination.. If I am a top female footballer I might be annoyed by the fact that I hit a ceiling within women's football when I believe I could achieve more playing in the mens competition, albeit not the best in the mens comp.

Whether she would be right in thinking that is another issue entirely. She would have to actually demonstrate that she could earn more in the men's league in my opinion. I suspect she wouldn't make it.

If you were to open those floodgates it would also have to go the other way - then I might become a pro footballer in the womens league myself tbh.

Well, they should at least be paid sufficiently that they don't have to work outside their football career to earn their money. Many female players have a part-time or even full-time job additional to their training, and then people wonder why the quality of play is not as good as it could be.

They may not get everything they are asking for, but they are about to get a HUGE pay increase. That 40% number is absolutely horrific. Thats not what we are about in the US, especially when the woman team is universally loved. More people down here will know Alex Morgan over Jozy Altidore. Playing on turf? Thats a no go.

rwo power wrote:Well, they should at least be paid sufficiently that they don't have to work outside their football career to earn their money. Many female players have a part-time or even full-time job additional to their training, and then people wonder why the quality of play is not as good as it could be.

This.

Australia's national women's team won the Asian Cup and reached the World Cup quarter finals, yet the players in the side were getting $21,000 a year prior to going on strike last September. It's impossible for the sport to grow if this is the reward for success. Even the compromise that side managed to reach was a fairly meagre increase, particularly for a nation that has an almost unnatural obsession with sport.

Voted 'yes'. Like BC said, it's all about the revenues they create.

Men and women are physically different > most spectator sports are largely about physical performance > men will be better at them > men will attract bigger audiences.

I read that one of the arguments that the U.S. women's football players used was that "we do better at tournaments than the men's team, but get paid less." But I'm afraid it's nothing to do with how well you do, it's about how much revenue those tournaments create.

dostoevsky wrote:

rwo power wrote:Well, they should at least be paid sufficiently that they don't have to work outside their football career to earn their money. Many female players have a part-time or even full-time job additional to their training, and then people wonder why the quality of play is not as good as it could be.

This.

Australia's national women's team won the Asian Cup and reached the World Cup quarter finals, yet the players in the side were getting $21,000 a year prior to going on strike last September. It's impossible for the sport to grow if this is the reward for success. Even the compromise that side managed to reach was a fairly meagre increase, particularly for a nation that has an almost unnatural obsession with sport.

I don't know, it can become problematic if players start getting paid more than the revenue they create suggests they should get paid. Where do you draw the line? If  women football players start to get paid more by their national associations, what stops other international level sportswomen from demanding higher pay, even if they don't create the revenue to justify those demands? I think you should go strictly by the revenue your sport creates. The world champions - either men or women - in some really unpopular sport probably get paid just peanuts, because they create very little interest and therefore very little revenue. Why should anyone in football or any other sport start getting paid more than strictly what their revenue dictates? The "sport must be let to grow" argument could be used on each and every sport, it's not sustainable.

Voted Yes (sadly). Am with Arte with this one. It's all about demand and supply cycle from economic point of view. If there is no demand or less demand for particular product the supply along with the quality of product will be affected negatively. It's harsh but true and only way out if this is creating the demand for product. Women definitely lack the physicality of men's football but they can overcome it by concentrating on skillful aspect of the game and thereby creating their own "brand".

Art Morte wrote:I don't know, it can become problematic if players start getting paid more than the revenue they create suggests they should get paid. Where do you draw the line? If  women football players start to get paid more by their national associations, what stops other international level sportswomen from demanding higher pay, even if they don't create the revenue to justify those demands? I think you should go strictly by the revenue your sport creates. The world champions - either men or women - in some really unpopular sport probably get paid just peanuts, because they create very little interest and therefore very little revenue. Why should anyone in football or any other sport start getting paid more than strictly what their revenue dictates? The "sport must be let to grow" argument could be used on each and every sport, it's not sustainable.

Other sports are free to respond as they wish.

FIFA have made it an objective to develop the potential of the women's game. Why then should they not take steps, and encourage each confederation to take steps, that will help boost that development?

Is the revenue that the sport generates an important consideration? Naturally. Why though is this viewed as some sort of static quantity that reflects the inherent quality and potential of the women's game? How much money was in football in general in the 60s? What's wrong with encouraging investment in the expectation of a return? What's wrong with paying athletes so that they can play full time, rather than having jobs as teachers and plumbers, as in the case of the Australian Matildas?

BC made the following comment:

BarrileteCosmico wrote:If women players want to get paid more then they should improve the product and convince more people to watch.

Increasing pay to make participation a realistic avenue goes hand in hand with improving the product. Sponsorship deals and TV deals will remain limited in part by the supposed 'quality' of the game, but they also have much to do with marketing and media exposure. This entire thread is full of terms such as brand and product. Well there is an audience and revenue streams to be tapped into by investing in the women's game. FIFA wouldn't be remotely interested if there weren't. Preventing athletes from pursuing their craft though will only promote stagnation.

The really interesting thing is that the first women games actually had a bigger audience, until the FAs decided to forbid women playing football in general: http://www.theguardian.com/football/2009/sep/10/england-womens-football-team

In the time women weren't allowed to play officially, the men's game evolved, and it was only in the 1970s (!!) that women were allowed to play again, which marks an almost 50 year gap of forcibly suppressed development. So IMO the FAs should definitely make up for this, and if it is just by making sure that women now get at least enough money to be able to train full time.

Oh, and if this  is to believed, at least in the US, the audience for the ladies seems to be even higher as the guys for the World Cup: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/football/article-3152577/Women-s-World-Cup-final-draws-record-audience-football-America-beat-Japan-seal-title-Canada.html

Isn't this just about what they get from the national team?

"One of the lawyers representing the players, Jeffrey Kessler, said the women's game generated more income for US Soccer than the men's and it was time to address the "discriminatory and unfair treatment'' they have endured for years." http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-35937077

If this is true the solution is simple.

It's a matter of revenues. If the women's league and the men's league made equivalent sums then they should get paid the same, but chances are the men's league makes 10x that amount so they get paid 10x more.

quote from BC's post.
Pretty much.

The point is that the majority of female players don't get anything at all, or at least not enough that they can train full-time. IMO this should be addressed first.

Well if it is within reasonable bounds of the association that they could increase the percentage of pay to satisfy the issue that all female players get payed an amount which is "worth it", then it should be done.

But then again, the point is that revenue certainly plays a big role.

Well, did you know that the German Women NT got a 41-part coffee set (!) as prize when they won their first Euro title in 1989? Nicely sexist prize and not even a fraction of what they guys get from the DFB, even though the German women NT actually draws quite some audiences, both on TV and in the stadium.

I did not know that. But that was in 1989. Surely we should be be talking about the present.

Well, fortunately now the ladies get some prize money, too, if they should win it - but then, as I mentioned the TV audience for the women NT is pretty good in Germany and you can watch every match of the NT on TV, too.

IMO the problem is that in many countries the ladies are not marketed properly, and thus the cat bites its own tail.

I.e. in England the English women NT's matches can be found only at marginalized channels (BBC Red Button or how that's called), plus if you look at comments sections of English media, the women game is widely derided, up to demanding that it shouldn't be shown on TV at all (okay, people who comment there are not all England, but still it shows the atmosphere).

So if there is actually action being taken to keep the women game small, and then people say they shouldn't be paid as they don't draw the audience, it is really a shame, and so there should be at least  enough fairness to not sabotage the women game and taking this as reason why they should not get paid, thus making it even more difficult to actually improve the quality.

dostoevsky wrote:[

Increasing pay to make participation a realistic avenue goes hand in hand with improving the product. Sponsorship deals and TV deals will remain limited in part by the supposed 'quality' of the game, but they also have much to do with marketing and media exposure. This entire thread is full of terms such as brand and product. Well there is an audience and revenue streams to be tapped into by investing in the women's game. FIFA wouldn't be remotely interested if there weren't. Preventing athletes from pursuing their craft though will only promote stagnation.

I'm all for them getting a better pay so long as it makes fiscal sense for the leagues, but not equal pay. Certainly it would be hard for them to improve the product as a part time job.

In general I would agree with those saying that it's revenue based (if women earn more revenue, they get a bigger cut).

From what I can tell with the US women's team, they actually generated more revenue than the men's team last year, therefore them making less is absurd.

What is this moderator war using the same avatars?

BarrileteCosmico wrote:

dostoevsky wrote:Increasing pay to make participation a realistic avenue goes hand in hand with improving the product. Sponsorship deals and TV deals will remain limited in part by the supposed 'quality' of the game, but they also have much to do with marketing and media exposure. This entire thread is full of terms such as brand and product. Well there is an audience and revenue streams to be tapped into by investing in the women's game. FIFA wouldn't be remotely interested if there weren't. Preventing athletes from pursuing their craft though will only promote stagnation.

I'm all for them getting a better pay so long as it makes fiscal sense for the leagues, but not equal pay. Certainly it would be hard for them to improve the product as a part time job.

Why is it that when male footballers demand hundreds of thousands of pounds per week to play, we tell ourselves they're worth exactly what they can negotiate, but women are simply asking more than they're worth? They have a right to pitch for as much as they can get and if they get it, by what right are we deciding that it's too high or low?

Neither I nor rwo expect them to be able to negotiate equal pay - which I think is a ridiculous concept in a code where there is such financial inequality within a league and a squad - but if they did, so what? You're not being asked to foot the bill.

These players are entitled to use whatever instruments are at their disposal to get a better deal. Whether they go on strike, go through the courts, employ pressure through media outlets or otherwise, they're not doing anything that hasn't been done a thousand times before by men and women in other industries. You're all entitled to question whether they're worth it and they'll respond in kind, I don't understand the outrage being expressed at the mere thought of a pay rise though.

Obviously they can ask for whatever they want - I have absolutely no problem with them trying to get the best deal possible to them as they should. If they want to sue, strike or so on power to them.

But the question at hand is whether it's unfair that there is a wage gap at all, and personally I don't think that's the case simply because female football is not as revenue generating and, as the product, female players are therefore not as productive. Sports are actually one of the industries with the highest upward mobility because it is highly meritocratic.

I can understand debating whether a wage gap in tennis is just but I don't think the problem translates well to football. In an individual sport like tennis where you're competing for a predetermined share of the prize money based on performance, it's a simple comparison. I also fully appreciate the view that this should differ on the basis of revenue and the fact that the demands placed on male and female athletes in Grand Slams are substantially different.

In football though, we've very few essentially collective agreements on which to base a discussion. I think it's significant though that national team agreements are part of this battleground. National team associations are meant to be interested in winning tournaments not cashing cheques. It's been mentioned that the US women generated more revenue than the men here, but I don't think that necessarily relevant, no matter which side it benefits. Surely participation for one's national side is meant to be a matter of honour and pride? Paying either team more based on revenue to me suggests that there is greater honour in one competition, which surely works against the message these associations are trying very consciously to promote. Paying each a living wage though ensures that they can focus on winning.

For their respective clubs however it is an entirely different matter. It's also worth noting that the majority of clubs don't even pretend that they are equally interested in both sides so it's not a matter of failing to take action to meet stated objectives.

I'm talking about leagues, as for the NT I'm not sure how exactly they go about getting paid or what the contract there is, but if it is true that the women's team generated 20m more than the men's team then they should be paid a higher share. It was always my stance that it should be linked to their revenue generating capacity: "If the women's league and the men's league made equivalent sums then they should get paid the same", from here it clearly follows that if they out earn the men then they should make more.

Art Morte wrote:What is this moderator war using the same avatars?

I haven't a clue of what you're talking about, Art.