Gender Pay Gap
I have been playing soccer since I was 7. During this time I have been to many places and done many things for the sport. For example, I have been to England and Spain to play soccer and I will be going to France this summer to play. I also made the futsal national team last summer and traveled to Columbia, South America to play there. Considering all that I just said, you might be wondering why I am telling you this. Well, I have done these things and accomplished certain goals in my soccer career so far in my life but I also don’t feel anywhere close to being finished with soccer. I have goals to play in college and hopefully even at a professional level sometime in my life. Yet, being a woman who has goals to play professional soccer could be a challenge at times. Playing women’s pro soccer has many differences compared to playing men’s pro soccer. One of the big difference between men’s and women’s pro soccer is the pay gap. In this article, I will be giving an overview of the gender pay gap, discuss how this specifically affects the women’s U.S. soccer national team and also talk about how this issue varies on a worldwide basis.
The gender pay gap is a really important topic to discuss considering that it affects almost all professions. It is shown that women are paid, on average, “80 cents for every dollar brought home by a man” and women tend to “accumulate more student loan debt than their male peers” (USA Today). Having a smaller paycheck than men do can dramatically affect a woman’s life. For example, a woman who earns less than a man could have more debt, more of a need to get another job, a harder financial life, and more financial difficulties. Many people might argue that women struggle more with financial aid because they choose lower paying jobs yet “nearly 90 percent of nurses are women, yet they are paid, on average, 10 percent less than male nurses. Female secretaries, earn 84.5 cents of a white male secretary’s dollar” (Equal Means Equal). These statistics show it’s not that females work less than men but there is more discrimination against women in the majority of jobs. Much of this could come from the stereotypical thought that girls are the weaker gender and can’t accomplish as much as men in the same period of time. Yet, this has been proven wrong many times over throughout history by many successful females who have accomplished multiple goals throughout their life.
One successful female who has accomplished and is still accomplishing many things in her life is Serena Williams. Serena Williams is the only women that is in the top 100 highest paid athletes yet she still has an “income that is $66m (£50m) lower than Cristiano Ronaldo’s, the world’s top-earning sportsman according to Forbes (BBC News)”. This is another example of the gender pay gap. The gender pay gap can also be seen throughout many other sports as well. In basketball “for the 2018 season, WNBA players are eligible for a maximum salary of $115,500. In contrast, the average starting salary of NBA players is upwards of $500,000 with two of its best players — Steph Curry and LeBron James — both earning well over $32 million a year or roughly $2.6 million a month” (Witi 30). ” This same problem is also shown in the United States Women’s Soccer Team who won the World Cup in 2015 and got 2 million dollars for winning while in 2014 the United States Men’s National Team made 9 million dollars without making it past the round of 16 in the World Cup. Many people argue that this is because of the revenue that the men bring in compared to the women and these people are correct if we are looking at this situation over a long period of time. Yet, the United States Women’s National Team brought in more revenue in 2015 than the men’s national team did. This is shown in a New York Times article when they said “women turned a profit of $6.6 million last year. The men? Their profit was just under $2 million. “ The New York Times also stated “that trend will be repeated: Expecting another Olympic gold medal, and another victory tour, the federation has forecast a profit of more than $5 million for the women’s team in the next fiscal year. The men? U.S. Soccer figures say they will lose about $1 million this year” (The New York Times). This data shows that not only was the women’s national team not bring in the same amount of revenue as the men’s national team but were bringing in more than the men’s national team was in 2015.
One might ask if the gender pay gap is relevant on a worldwide basis and how relevant it is compared to the United States. Research would indicate that the gender pay gap is getting better is some countries. For example, in New Zealand, the Women’s Pro soccer team just got equal pay with the men’s team. This means that “New Zealand is the first of the international soccer’s to come to such an all-inclusive agreement for its national teams” (Global Citizen). This is a big step in Women’s Pro soccer and women’s pro sports in general because it breaks the mold of not having equal pay for women in any country. This could influence other countries to start giving more pay and more advantages to females who play professional sports right now or in the future. Yet, the UK gender pay gap seems to still be pretty significant. A Guardian article talks about how the “figures from the [Soccer]Association shows the average hourly pay for a man at the organization which was 23.2% higher than for a woman” (The Guardian). Yet, the article also mentions that many British Sport Associations are trying to take steps to narrow this problem.
The gender pay gap in sports and careers in general exists and can dramatically affect a woman’s life and how she is able to support herself. It also affects how she is able to take care of her financial situation or any children that she needs to support. Having equal pay for women could help pull females and their children out of poverty. It could also allow females to play pro sports as their main job without a extra job, create equality among all. This will continue to keep more females financially secure and able to live the life they want. This is important to think and talk about because there needs to be changes towards the gender pay gap to help better our society. These changes are being made gradually and we are starting to see their effects throughout the world yet hopefully we can make these changes at a faster rate going forward from here. So, my goal to play soccer during college and the goal of be able to play professional soccer somewhere could come true with the help of equal pay between the men and women’s teams.
-Holly Barney
Sources:
Das, Andrew. “In Fight for Equality, U.S. Women’s Soccer Team Leads the Way.” The New York Times, The New York Times, 5 Mar. 2018, www.nytimes.com/2018/03/04/sports/soccer/us-womens-soccer-equality.html.
Das, Andrew. “Pay Disparity in U.S. Soccer? It’s Complicated.” The New York Times, The New York Times, 19 Jan. 2018, www.nytimes.com/2016/04/22/sports/soccer/usmnt-uswnt-soccer-equal-pay.html.
Ingle, Sean. “Significant Pay Gaps Reported by British Sport Governing Bodies.” The Guardian, Guardian News and Media, 4 Apr. 2018, www.theguardian.com/society/2018/apr/04/british-sport-governing-bodies-significant-gender-pay-gap-football-association-rugby-football-union.
Kelner, Martha. “Football’s Gender Pay Gap Worse than in Politics, Medicine and Space.” The Guardian, Guardian News and Media, 26 Nov. 2017, www.theguardian.com/football/2017/nov/26/football-gender-pay-gap-worse-than-in-politics-medicine-and-space.
“The Gender Pay Gap.” Equal Means Equal, equalmeansequal.com/the-gender-pay-gap/.
“The New Zealand Women’s Soccer Team Just Won Equal Pay.” Global Citizen, www.globalcitizen.org/en/content/new-zealand-womens-soccer-equal-pay/.
Perasso, Valeria. “100 Women: Is the Gender Pay Gap in Sport Really Closing?” BBC News, BBC, 23 Oct. 2017, www.bbc.com/news/world-41685042.
“The Simple Truth about the Gender Pay Gap.” AAUW: Empowering Women Since 1881, www.aauw.org/research/the-simple-truth-about-the-gender-pay-gap/.
“Wage Inequality in Football.” Department of Physical Occupational Therapy, Insects of the Duke Campus, 4 May 2018, sites.duke.edu/wcwp/2018/05/03/wage-inequality-in-football/.
