Why is there a wage gap between the men’s US soccer team and the women’s US soccer team?

On 1st may 2020 we got news that a judge dismissed the US women’s national soccer team’s claim for equal pay and I demand to know why! So I did a bunch of research and wrote a 1000 word essay on it…

As much as I just want to shout from the rooftops MEN AND WOMEN SHOULD BE PAID THE SAME!!!.. I wanted to see why this case was denied by a judge and look at it from a business perspective to try to understand why and if there is any justification there that I’ve missed on my blind feminist rage.

Firstly there has been a claim that women are paid more than men – https://bit.ly/3fdtJ4d Stop this immediately. This is data has been manipulated and presented deliberately to confuse people and it should not be entertained. The New York Times pulled this apart – the women had such high salary because they had successfully won the competitions which the mens team didn’t do. “By failing to qualify for the only men’s World Cup played during the class window, the men became ineligible for millions of dollars in performance bonuses of their own. Those payments would have swelled their paydays from U.S. Soccer far beyond what the women could ever earn.” So no women do not get paid more, the women just did better than the mens team and were given bonus money which the men also have access to but failed to achieve.

The argument is not about the salaries exactly but equal funding into things like youth schools, nutrition, travel, hotels and coaching: This is currently split unevenly for the benefit of the mens team, here is Megan Rapinoe explaining it herself…https://twitter.com/PodSaveAmerica/status/1149490038608027648

I have explored each of the top reasons why I think people could argue why they should pay the mens team more…

1.The women don’t bring in the same amount of money as the men

According to the Washington Post, ” The women’s team contributed close or more than half of the federation’s revenue from games since fiscal 2016. Overall, from fiscal 2016 to 2018, the women’s games generated about $900,000 more revenue than the men’s games. In the year following the 2015 World Cup win, women’s games generated $1.9 million more than the men’s games.” https://wapo.st/3ddaOEZ

But according to politicfact, “Looking year by year, 2016 was actually the only year in which the women’s team generated more revenue from games — $24.11 million, compared to $22.24 million for the men. In 2017, both teams brought in about the same revenue at $14.61 million, and in 2018, the men’s team brought in $13 million compared to the women’s $12.03 million.​” So basically it is about the same. For arguments sake – we start the game neck and neck, the score stands at 1-1.

2. The womens team doesn’t bring in as many viewers

The 2015 FIFA Women’s World Cup Final drew a record 26.7 million viewers and the 2010 Men’s World Cup final drew 26.5 million viewers. Neither team is able to pull into the lead, we move forward 2-2.

3.Games cost money to put on and the women’s teams need more funding

“Matches are expensive to produce and players have to be paid, so games don’t always turn a profit for the federation. That said, in fiscal 2016 and 2017, the women’s team generated more cash than expenses, bringing in net revenue of $8 million and $1 million, respectively. The men’s team in fiscal 2015 and 2016 posted net revenue of $350,000 and $2.7 million, respectively.” https://wapo.st/3ddaOEZ  – so the womens team have just pulled in the lead our new score at 3-2.

4. The women’s team make less from merchandise sales

Since 2015 it looks like the women’s team have been bringing in more money. “according to Fanatics, the world’s largest retailer of licensed sports merchandise. This team’s product is the top-selling U.S. soccer national team — men’s or women’s — of all-time. In fact, more USWNT championship merchandise was sold in the first hour — 200 percent more merchandise — after the clinch than the entire first day following the U.S. women’s win in 2015. Sales were 500 percent higher for the first day this year versus four years ago. And Fanatics sold more USWNT Championship merchandise Sunday than the 2015 champions sold for the entire month after their win.” Read more here: https://bit.ly/3c1TOkW is that another one for the women’s team? YES IT IS!! They pull ahead 4-2!

5. Sponsorships bring in less money for the women’s team than the mens

And here is where everything comes crashing down…our 4-2 score is now smashed to smithereens. Sponsorships with brands are negotiated as a bundle which means it is impossible to know if the money is being given to be split evenly. The only way we would find this out is if people working for those brands broke laws to provide the public with that information, which would lose them the account and their careers and some of these brands are staying tight lipped. According to The New York Times, “Coca-Cola, Johnson & Johnson and Continental Tire — did not respond to requests for comment, and another, the watchmaker Tag Heuer, declined to comment. Volkswagen said it believed in “equality, inclusion and access,” and AT&T said the company had “clearly communicated our position that we expect players to be equally compensated” to U.S. Soccer.” https://nyti.ms/3c0ZT13

But there have been two brands who have joined the fight for equal pay. Nike created a moving ad to publicly support the US women’s Soccer team… https://nyti.ms/3fcp56R and Secret deodorant made the biggest move ever…”Secret bought a full-page ad in The Times announcing that it would donate $529,000 — $23,000 for each of the 23 players on the roster — to the national team’s players association. The ad announcing the donation criticized U.S. Soccer directly, urging it to be on “the right side of history.”

So the question for me is it looks like the brands who sponsor the Soccer could be dishing out less for the women’s team than they do the mens and if this the case I want to know WHY? I cannot see any evidence to support why they wouldn’t want it split evenly if not for women’s right then for BUSINESS sense?

Maybe they are, and it is the US Soccer Federation that is splitting it unevenly? Again, we will probably never know…

So what the hell is going on?

The last thing to take into consideration is that women and men are paid differently – the men are paid based on when they play, the women are paid regardless of whether they play or not. So the women are guaranteed money but their ability to earn the same has men has a cap on it because there is more money in the mens league than there is in the female league. The women’s league is given a lot less money than the mens league and so the US soccer team are just benefitting because they are men…hmmmm seems like classic misogyny doesn’t it? Forbes explains it like this… “The system is not set up that the men and women have access to the same pot of money and the men are given a larger helping. The prize pools are taken from the total revenue from the respective leagues. The bottom line is that there is more money generated in the men’s league. Since there is more money in the men’s soccer globally, the teams and players get a larger payout. Even though the U.S. team is not terribly competitive compared to their peers, they have the advantage of playing in a lucrative league. Although the U.S. women’s team has a more superior winning record, they are playing in a league that has a smaller pool of prize money to offer the winners. Unfortunately, the reality is that although the women win more than the men, it is irrelevant to the equal-pay argument, as they play in a different league.”

But Forbes argument seems dated when looking at the stats I have given above with what money is being generated where…

John Jay – College of criminal justice did a bunch of research on why the women’s soccer league is less funded than the mens and this was their conclusion “Research shows how women are often represented in accordance to hegemonic femininity and that the inequality women in sports face is due to society holding masculine values above all else.”

So on top of winning everything and being all round global superstars, the female soccer team must spend their free time fighting for equal pay. In the words of two-time World Cup winner, Rapinoe “We will never stop fighting for EQUALITY.”

Cat calling is not a compliment

To everyone who thinks that cat calling a woman is a COMPLIMENT this is what I say to you.

It is not a compliment.

Have you ever heard a woman say they like it? Unlikely. In fact, you have probably heard women only say how much they hate it. Why are you not listening? It is as if you’ve decided to make up your own mind about how it should make someone else feel – you don’t get to make that decision. Especially if you haven’t experienced it yourself. Instead of dismissing the complaints from females around you, try to understand and empathise instead. By not listening and still thinking that it is a compliment you are feeding the old ideas like that women’s voices don’t matter, that they shouldn’t be taken seriously, that they are hysterical. We are passed this way of thinking and you should be too.

It might be easier to not get involved. It might be frightening to stand up for someone else but guys, we are relying on you to help make a change. What is actually more frightening is that if you are not part of the solution then you are part of the problem. We cannot ignore this any longer. Listen to the women in your life that you love and care about and help them.

Cat calling is not a compliment. Cat calling happens all the time and it happens to lots of people, especially when some flesh is being shown. It might be 32 degrees and so a girl is walking around in shorts and a t shirt. This is not an attention seeking move, this is because it is hot. End of. If you are sitting there thinking that that girl got wolf whistled or shouted at because of what she was wearing I plead you to question your thinking. This feeds into this idea that if women show flesh then they are “asking for it”. We are not asking for it. We are existing. Woman can talk, if she wants it she will tell you. It is actually very simple.

I’ve tried to find so many ways of explaining what it feels like to be cat called in the street to help you understand. This is the best I can come up with…imagine you’re sitting in a classroom full of people and the teacher says to you “Everybody look at this guy sitting here! Look at him, look at his feet, look at his facial hair, look at the size of his dick.” and the rest of the class starts jeering at you and telling you to smile. Do you like that attention? If you ignore them they get louder and annoyed at you. If you respond they are encouraged to say more. If you swear at them, they turn nasty and say you are an ungrateful whore…can I make myself any clearer?

I am not writing this to shame any men, that is not the point of this article. I realise that things are changing very quickly in society in regards to the treatment of woman, I realise that the education of young men might be be able to keep up. Therefore it is OK if you might ave been part of this cat calling culture before without realising the impacts, it doesn’t solely sit in your hands. This is not to say that this behaviour can be justified but it is to empathise that you might not have understood the implications of you/your friends behaviour. All I want now if for you to listen, listen to the women around you to try to be compassionate and understand what it feels like to be objectified.

Cat calling is not a compliment. You may think it’s just such a small thing and why get so bothered over it? It might be a small thing for you but women are brought up to watch over our shoulders in case we are being followed by a man. Cat calling is intimidating, it is putting us in a spotlight we are not asking to be in, please do not put us in this position any more.

To those women who see cat calls as validation of your beauty – it is not. Women don’t get cat called because they are beautiful. Women get cat called because there is a group of men with something to prove, or because there is skin showing and toxic men are using that as an invitation to talk to you. It is old fashioned and predatory. A power play NOT a compliment. Cat calling is NOT about how pretty you are, it is about men practising their power over women and you know what?

We have had enough.