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Do Women’s Soccer Players Deserve Equal Pay for Equal Play?

photograph of stands at women's world cup match

The popularity of women’s soccer is growing rapidly. The 2019 FIFA Women’s World Cup in France is being watched by record-breaking numbers of people around the world. 10.9 million people in France watched the hosts opening match against South Korea, far above the previous record of 4.12 million for a women’s soccer game. In the United Kingdom, 6.1 million people watched the match between England and Scotland. Similarly, in the United States, viewing figures have risen by 11% from the previous World Cup in 2015, even though the matches are played at a less convenient time for American audiences. 

Off the pitch though, women footballers continue to struggle for fair treatment from footballing authorities. One high-profile area of protest is the issue of prize money. The winners of this year’s World Cup will receive $4 million dollars in prize money, more than double the amount for the winners of the 2015 competition. An impressive figure, we might think, until we compare it to the $38 million received by the winners of the men’s World Cup in 2018. In total, FIFA has set aside $30 million in prize money for the Women’s competition compared to $400 million for last year’s men’s competition. 

The issue of gender inequality becomes even worse when we consider differences in pay. The 2017 Sporting Intelligence Survey found that the gender pay gap in football is particularly extreme compared to other sports. To take two clear examples, the average first-team player in the (men’s) English Premier League received £2.64 million in 2017, while the average pay for a player in the equivalent women’s league, the FA Women’s Super League, was just £26,752, while the total pay for all players in the top seven women’s leagues was roughly equal to the pay for just one male footballer, Neymar at Paris St-Germain. As Martha Kelner, chief sports reporter for The Guardian, points out, these figures suggest, “football is perhaps the most unequal profession in the world.” 

In response many women’s national teams have demanded for this pay gap to be eliminated or at least reduced. The US Women’s team are currently involved in a lawsuit against the US Soccer Federation over ‘institutionalized gender discrimination’ and demanding to be paid the same as the men’s team. Similarly, the Danish team refused to play in a friendly match in 2017 in protest over their pay and conditions, while the Scottish team implemented a brief media blackout in a similar protest in 2017. There have also been some notable successes. In 2017 the Norwegian FA introduced equal pay for their men and women’s teams, while the Dutch FA recently agreed to introduce equal pay by 2023. 

Are national associations morally required to pay their men and women’s soccer teams the same amount? As I have argued elsewhere (together with my colleague Martine Prange) there are three different arguments to support such a duty. Most straightforwardly, we might see the gender pay gap in soccer as a case of gender discrimination. The US team have been pushing this kind of argument in their campaign for Equal Pay for Equal Play. As star-player Carli Lloyd put the point, she and her teammates were, “sick of being treated like second-class citizens.” Feminist campaigners around the world have long argued that men and women working in the same job or equivalent jobs should be paid the same. Paying women less than men for the same work is unjust gender discrimination and is morally wrong. Given that women’s soccer players are being paid less than their male equivalents for playing for their national teams, this seems like a clear case of wrongful discrimination.  

However, this argument has been met with fierce resistance by some commentators. Writing about the decision of the Norwegian FA to introduce equal pay, journalist Matthew Syed claimed, “Norwegian male footballers are effectively doing a different job. In economic terms, they are more productive, persuading more fans and TV viewers to watch them, and more companies to sponsor them.” According to Syed, the different levels of revenue generated by the two different teams means that their work should not be viewed as the same or even equivalent. This means that paying these two teams differently is not an instance of discrimination; it is simply a reflection of the differing commercial value of the two teams. 

While many find this form of response persuasive, it cannot be used to justify all of soccer’s gender pay gaps. In the case of the US women’s team, there simply does not seem to be any good reason to think that the women’s team generates less revenue than the men’s. After winning the World Cup in 2015, the US women’s football team generated a $6.6 million profit compared to the men’s team’s $2 million. In the three years following, more total revenue has been generated from the women’s team’s matches than from those of the men’s team. Despite this, the women’s team continues to be paid less than the men’s team. At least in this case, there seems little reason to accept that the lower level of pay is a reflection of the lower levels of revenue generated and the charge of discrimination seems fair. 

However, the case of the US Women’s team is something of an exception. At most national soccer associations, the men’s team generates more revenue than the women. Some may take this to be the end of the discussion. If the different levels of pay simply a reflect the different levels of revenue generated then there does not seem to be any discrimination going on. And if it is not discriminatory then we may think that there is no moral requirement to pay women’s teams the same as men’s. 

This conclusion, though, assumes that avoiding discrimination is the only ethical reason that could support equal pay for women’s footballers. This is a mistake. A different ethical reason in favor of equal pay is that this action would be valuable for what it would express about the value of women’s soccer. This thought seems to underlie at least some of the recent moves towards equal pay. As the President of the Norwegian Players’ Association, Joachim Walltin, said of his association’s decision to introduce equal pay: “it was actually the FA’s own idea to go for equality. They said: ‘Isn’t it a cool idea and wouldn’t it be a good signal if we did things equally?’” The idea here is that by paying both sets of players the same, national associations would send a message that men’s and women’s football are equally valuable. This would be a positive message to send and may help to improve how people view women’s soccer. 

While this does seem like a positive message, some might object that it does not provide any reason to think there is a moral duty for associations to move to equal pay. Yes this would be a nice thing to do but would it really be wrong to keep paying men’s players more? Wouldn’t it also be acceptable to continue to pay male players more in order to reflect their higher commercial value? The positive message in itself might not seem to provide a sufficiently strong reason to think there is any moral obligation here. 

The case that there is a duty for national associations to move to equal pay becomes much stronger when we consider the role that national football associations have played in frustrating the development of women’s football. In England, for example, around 150 women’s soccer teams existed in 1921 with high-profile matches attracting tens of thousands of people. One especially high-profile match between Dick Kerr Ladies and St Helen Ladies attracted 53,000 spectators with an estimated 14,000 more people unable to gain entry into the ground. By the end of the following year however, the English Football Association responded by banning women’s football from their members’ grounds. Their reason? That, “The game of football is quite unsuitable for females and it ought not to be encouraged.” The English FA was far from alone in this. Similar bans on women’s football were introduced in France, West Germany, Brazil, and the Netherlands among others. 

The role these associations have played in frustrating the development of women’s football means that they cannot straightforwardly appeal to the lower commercial value of women’s football in justifying lower pay. One reason for this is that their actions are in large part responsible for this lower commercial value. If these associations had not banned women’s football then the commercial value of women’s football would likely be much higher than it is today. Another reason is that this history should change how we view the moral reasons favoring equal pay. The reasons that associations have are not simply ones concerning what it would be nice or good for them to do. Rather they owe duties of reparation to the women’s game to try to make up for the historical injustice these associations have committed against women’s football and women footballers. Those associations that have committed such injustices have a duty to attempt to make amends. What clearer way of doing so than to commit to equal pay for women’s footballers and sending the message that men’s football and women’s football are equally valuable?

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USA vs. Thailand and the Limits of Sportsmanship

photograph of two female soccer plays celebrating during match

The first round of this year’s Women’s World Cup saw a rather lopsided result, with team USA defeating team Thailand by a score of 13-0. This has been by far the largest margin of victory so far, with the second largest coming from a 4-0 victory of France over South Korea, and with goal differentials generally averaging around 1 or 2. While it is certainly not unheard of to see such one-sided results (compare results from the 2015 Women’s World Cup, which recorded several comparable outcomes), that team USA beat their opponents so soundly has made some question whether doing so was unsportsmanlike.

People have generally taken issue with the match in one of two ways: first, some have claimed that simply “running up the score” is unsportsmanlike, and that team USA should have held back after it was clear that they were going to win. Second, some have expressed the view that the manner in which team USA celebrated their late goals was unsportsmanlike, insofar as players continued to be enthusiastic about them: one might think that while it is okay to be very excited about scoring the first few goals, once you’ve hit a dozen then maybe you should tone it down a bit.

For example, Fox Sports analyst Rob Stone stated that the game became “humiliating,” that it was little more than “target practice for the United States,” and that while up by so many goals a team should instead “pull it back” and “knock it around” instead of trying to score again. Clare Rustad and Kaylyn Kyle, former members of Canada’s national team, did not appreciate that the US team celebrating their late goals enthusiastically, with Rustad commenting that “I would have hoped they could have won with humility and grace, but celebrating goals eight, nine, 10 like they were doing was really unnecessary,” and Kyle stating that “I’m all about passion, but as a Canadian we would just never ever think of doing something like that.”

Forward Megan Rapinoe received perhaps the lion’s share of the backlash online for being what some judged as overly enthusiastic, scoring 5 goals and celebrating each of them. While it is of course not against the official rules to celebrate scoring a goal, it is commonplace for people to make reference to the “unwritten rules” of sports, one of which is perhaps to try to win as gracefully as possible. Should we think that Rapinoe and team USA violated such an unwritten rule, or that they acted in unsportsmanlike ways?

To address this question is would be good, of course, to have a sense of what “unsportsmanlike behavior” consists of. To help us with this question we can turn to those working on the philosophy of sport. Consider some early thoughts on the nature of sportsmanship from philosopher James Keating:

The primary purpose of sport is not to win the match, to catch the fish or kill the animal, but to derive pleasure from the attempt to do so and to afford pleasure to one’s fellow participants in the process…[G]enerosity and magnanimity are essential ingredients in the conduct and attitude properly described as sportsmanlike. They establish and maintain the unique social bond; they guarantee that the purpose of sport – the immediate pleasure of the participants – will not be sacrificed to other more selfish ends. All the prescriptions which make up the code of sportsmanship are derived from this single, basic, practical maxim: Always conduct yourself in such a manner that you will increase rather than detract from the pleasure to be found in the activity, both your own and that of your fellow participants.

One lesson we can draw from these thoughts is that playing a sport cannot just be a single-minded drive to win by any means necessary. However, while Keating seems right that sports are not solely about winning, they are, at the same time, at least somewhat about winning. Other philosophers have noted that there can be a tension between the goal of winning and Keating’s goal of trying to make sure that everyone is having fun. For example, philosopher Diana Abad argues that there are “four elements of sportsmanship: fairness, equity, good form and the will to win” but recognizes that the last is often in conflict with the first three. As a result, Abad argues that sportsmanship requires that we attempt to balance the components as much as possible.

We might worry that continuing to score goals in an already lopsided affair would run afoul of these requirements of sportsmanship: it seems that one would not be attempting to make sure that one’s opponent is having as fun of an experience as possible after going up by a dozen goals, and by doing so one might think that the balance between the will to win and good form has gone out of whack. There may, however, be more to the story. For example, philosopher Nicholas Dixon recognizes that it might seem that beating an opponent so soundly could seem cruel, but also argues that lopsided victories can be valuable in that they display tremendous athletic ability. Furthermore, argues Dixon, it may seem to be more of a humiliation to one’s opponents to take it easy on them, since doing so would potentially show disrespect towards them as athletes.

We might also think that while it would be unsportsmanlike to score and celebrate goals with the intent to humiliate one’s opponents, so long as a player is themselves having fun playing a game they love then chastising them for doing so would border on pearl-clutching. For example, Luis Paez-Pumar writing at Deadspin reported that Megan Rapinoe did not think that accusations of unsportsmanlike behavior were well founded, with Paez-Pumar summarizing the matter as follows: “So there you have it: Megan Rapinoe is not sorry for playing a sport with joy.”

There are still, of course, limits to sportsmanlike behavior. But in the case of the response to Rapinoe and the US team it seems that we would do well to keep in mind that one can still win, have fun, and not violate the unwritten rules of sportsmanship.

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Colorblindness, the World Cup, and the Difficulty of Hyphenated Identities

photograph of Trevor Noah speaking into a microphone

This article has a set of discussion questions tailored for classroom use. Click here to download them. To see a full list of articles with discussion questions and other resources, visit our “Educational Resources” page.

In celebration of France’s World Cup win, Trevor Noah congratulated Africa and the Africans on their victory. This was a commentary on the majority of France’s players having African heritage, but was quickly met with a response from the French ambassador.

The question of French identity has often been controversial, and in a letter to Noah, the French ambassador points out that when xenophobic neo-Nazis spread their hateful messages, they use rhetoric similar to Noah’s – emphasizing the “Africanness” of some citizens of France, which for the neo-Nazis speaks against their French identities.

The French Ambassador to the United States, Gerard Araud, was speaking for the “colorblindness” ethos that is alive and well in France today, largely a response to its troubles with rampant xenophobia. France recently removed “race” from its constitution in a move to further the value of viewing the world through a “colorblind”, or race-free, lens and instead see the human race, and especially the French people, as unified.

Noah pushed back against the idea that someone’s origins did not matter. In his original segment, he joked, “You don’t get that tan in the south of France”, and in his response to the ambassador’s letter, he alluded to the colonial history that underpins the immigration story for so many of France’s African heritage citizens. These presses fit with the Comedy Central host’s overall call for more nuance and context, both in discourse and dialectic (when he uses his culture’s slang it means something different than when a hateful white person does) and in our understanding of identities (having one heritage does not necessarily make you have less of another – being African should not preclude Frenchness).

In drawing attention to this latter point, Noah noted in particular the passage where Araud claimed, “Unlike in the United States of America, France does not refer to its citizens based on their race, religion or origin. To us there is no hyphenated identity. By calling them African, it seems you are denying their Frenchness.” In avoiding emphasizing hyphenated identity, France attempts to emphasize a national unity and undermine the divisive xenophobic influences. After all, in 1998 when a diverse French team won the World Cup, a political leader condemned the team’s ability to represent France on the basis of their heritage, claiming they were unworthy and didn’t know the words to the national anthem.

However, in battling the ambassador’s supposed message of unity, Noah paints the US’s hyphenated identity as a positive alternative, as though France’s criticisms were wholly unfounded. There are worries with the “colorblind”, race-denying, and ahistorical approach to governing and understanding a nation such as France is attempting, perhaps, but in a call for more nuance and context, Noah celebrated the United States’s inclusion of hyphenated identities as though it has been a road towards inclusion and celebration of heritage here historically.

In his remarks about the issues with France’s value of colorblindness, Noah points out that in practice it often amounts to a selective colorblindness, where someone’s non-French origins are noted when their non-desirability is at stake. When someone wins the World Cup, they’re French, but when you’d rather not identify them as a part of your nation, they’re “from elsewhere”. This is typically how hyphenated identities work in general, including in the US.

In her recent comedy special Nanette, Hannah Gadsby discusses identity at length. She addresses straight white men in their current time of discomfort in a telling way: this is the first time their identity gets a name. Previously they’ve been “human neutral”. Typically, you get a hyphen for being different, marginalized, some identity that gets dealt with. This point is consistent with Noah’s point about how the French identity is granted as an honorific often in discourse. And with a hyphenated identity comes a label to celebrate and feel pride, overcoming marginalization in community and strength; as Noah notes, there are parades for some, like Saint Patrick’s Day.

It is important that one identity isn’t denied by noting another. One person can be a member of multiple communities. However, having a country of hyphenated identities does not solve the problems of racism and bigotry any more than taking race out of a constitution and aiming for “colorblindness.” It’s more nuanced than that.