Pay Gap in Women’s Soccer

Sports

Published on July 9th, 2015 | by Devon Mirsky

The USA women’s soccer team just won the World Cup! AWESOME!

But amongst all this celebration, there is a dark cloud hovering over the female players about being paid less than the male soccer players.

There is no way around the fact that the women are earning much less, but as usual it’s not as simple as just women being discriminated against.

When you look at the facts, it explains everything clearly.

No one was expecting so many people to tune into the game, which explains why revenue from ads only added up to $17 million compared to $529 million during last year’s world cup in Brazil.

Women have participated in fewer games than the men’s soccer teams (7 compared to 30) and prize money increases with each tournament played. AND it turns out that women are actually making a higher percentage of the earnings compared to their male counterparts. The female players got 13% of total revenue in 2011 while the men received 9% in 2010 and only 7% in 2014! The overall earnings for the Women’s World Cup was SIGNIFICANTLY lower than the men’s, so the pay discrepancies are unavoidable. Clearly they’re trying to equalize the “playing field” by actually giving the women more of an advantage.

Now it turns out this game set a record for most television viewers of a soccer match in American history!

With the major success that this women’s world cup tournament brought, I’m sure you’ll find more sponsorships that will want in when the next one comes around. That also means with more money and revenue, there will be more for the players to earn, and they of course will receive that pay raise since a lot of it is based on percentage of earnings.

It’s called the free-market, and you can only pay and charge as much as the demand allows.

Amongst players themselves you see wage discrepancies. This is very common in major male sports like basketball and football. The most desired players earn a lot more money than the rest of the team. Is that unfair too?

The positive news is that the popularity of women’s soccer grew tremendously and will surely increase more!

Tags: devon mirsky, FIFA, futbal, pay, pay gap, soccer, wages, women’s soccer, world cup