I promise to write the following article with an open mind, not being biased. With that being said, I will, however, be including my thoughts and opinions on a couple of things here and there.
Why equal pay?
One of the most controversial and debated topic in sports is equal pay. In sports like cricket and football, female athletes have dealt with innumerable challenges in the past. Some of these challenges like better facilities, training staff, the infamous stereotype of women being weak and fragile, incapable of dealing with the pressure and athleticism of ‘men’s sports’ in the minds of quite a few people, and sexist media coverage are amongst many other challenges that these athletes still faces or had faced in the past. Fortunately, a lot of these issues have been addressed and are resolved to a great extent. Taking the recent T20 women’s cricket world cup and FIFA women’s football world cup, people have started to accept, enjoy and even promote women’s sports. The only challenge that remains is the huge pay gap between women’s sports and men’s.
From that world myself, I sometimes find myself in this kind of situation, on a much smaller scale though. I’ve been fortunate enough to be a part of many inter college football tournaments in the past. Working very closely to the sports co-ordinator of the fest, I realised a couple of things which I’ll get to in a while. Every tournament had a huge gap between the amount of money that boy’s team would win, if they win the tournament and the money girl’s team would win on winning the tournament. That bothered me a little but dwelling upon this was a waste of time as being a part of the tournament and getting to play on a competitive level itself felt like a price. Yes, as sad as it sounds, for some of us convincing people for letting us participate or organise a tournament itself is a huge challenge. Price money is something that never crosses our mind. That is till some of the recent matches we realised that the money our college spends on transportation or allowance to send our team is so much more than the money we win on winning the entire tournament. However, as you probably would’ve guessed, this is the case with girls’ teams only. We work just as hard as boys’ team while also dealing with some absurd rules and restrictions. For instance, we are not allowed to enter the football field in the evening. Reason: Unknown. This is, to my surprise, applicable for both girls and boys. However, there’s a big enough field for boys in their hostel where they get to practice whenever they want. We don’t even have a proper open space in our hostel, let alone a field. We somehow squeeze in our 10-12 players in a very tight space between a couple of hostel blocks and only work on footwork. Practicing on a concrete floor results in injuries. I’m not talking about scrapes and sprains here, on a practice session for our last match against CMC, our captain broke her ankle while we were playing a practice match on the basketball court. Not only was she unable to participate in the match, she was out of the team for months. When we deal with issues like these, price money is literally the last thing in our minds amongst others like the condition of our gears like boots, shin guards etc. and sickening uneven tan on our bodies. Participating on a competitive level, practicing for winning the matches and forming a team (considering female participation in team sports specially football is ridiculously low) sits on top of the priority shelf.
Coming back to what I realised after working with the sports co-ordinator for all the matches that were being organised in the college for Riviera.
Convincing colleges to send their teams to participate in the tournament is so much harder than I thought and
Dividing the price money fairly among the winners of different sports is impossible.
We all know that this is the harsh reality of every college fest and it doesn’t matter how many hours you spend practicing and how much effort you put in, the truth is that price money only depends on the number of colleges you manage to convince on sending their team to be a part of your tournament. We know this, yet for a person who spends so much time on improving their game from hours of practice on the field to taking the football to the mess and dodging past the students and mess ladies to get better at dribbling and dodging, its a little hard to wrap her head around.
Equal pay is taken to be a huge matter of concern by some whereas some athletes simply take it as another road block which will resolve in time. Like for example, Smriti Mandhana says its unfair to ask for equal pay revenue comes from men’s cricket. “I don’t think any of my teammates are thinking about this gap because the only focus right now is to win matches for India, get the crowd coming in and earn revenues. That what we are aiming for, and if that happens, everything else will fall in place,” she said. Whereas five women of the US Women’s National Team (Carli Lloyd, Alex Morgan, Megan Rapinoe, Becky Sauerbrunn and Hope Solo) filed a complaint against the US Soccer Federation allegation violations of the Federal anti-discrimination laws and demanded that they be paid amounts that are equal to the amount paid to the members of the US Men’s National Team.
The ten highest-paid athletes over the last decade are all men. But did you know that the top 20 and top 30 athletes are also men. Constructing a straightforward comparison between the pay for the women and the pay for the men is more complex than one might anticipate. Second and tertiary variables such as games played, qualifications relative to calendar year, sponsorship money and outside mandates skew the figures.
There’s absolutely no doubt that the USWNT is more successful relative to their field. While the men’s team recently failed to qualify for the upcoming World Cup, the USWNT have won two consecutive World Cups (2015, 2019) and four since 1991 (1991, 1999, 2015, 2019). Furthermore, they’ve captured four of the last six Olympic Gold Medals (1996, 2004, 2008, 2012) and eight of nine CONCACAF Gold Cup Championships (all but 2010). However, the revenue generated from the FIFA World Cup poses an enormous obstacle in the women’s quest for equal compensation. The total prize money afforded to field in the 2015 Women’s FIFA World Cup was $15 million, 40 times less than the $576 million earned by the men’s side. As FIFA Women’s World Cup Champions, the USWNT brought home $33 million less than the men’s champion, Germany.
The huge gap that exists between the men’s and women’s sport is unfair. In my opinion, the mindset is to be blamed here. One of the reason for this gap is the media coverage. Media brings popularity which in turn brings sponsorships. With that being said, blaming media houses does not make sense either in my opinion. Media generates money by covering events that truly entertains or interests the public. Instead of assuming women’s matches to be slow and boring and underestimating their skills, its time that we actually watch their matches and then decide. This old fashioned mindset is the reason behind these athletes boycotting and fighting for a decade for equality.
"Don't settle for anything less, go for equal, go for more, don't accept any of these sort of antiquated and BS answers. I know it's frustrating and hard - at times you feel like you're banging your head against a wall - but we're sort of in it anyways. It's a fact of life for us so we might as well fight like hell.” Rapinoe encourages other women to “keep fighting”.
This decade has not only shown us that women in sports will no longer fall victim to the environment that has produced a society of such significant inequality but has also given us a glimpse into the future. In the next decade the fact that women haven’t had access to sports for as long as men will no longer be an excuse for unequal pay. In the next decade the misogyny and sexism underlying the images and lack of support of female athletes will no longer prevent women from demanding better treatment. Women in sports are harnessing their brands and their power and will have the equity they deserve in the decade to come.
Rapinoe was named Women’s Player of the Year at the Best FIFA Football Awards
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