On Sunday night-surely you know by now-the United States Women's National Team won the World Cup with a high-scoring 5–2 victory over Japan.
What has gotten just as much attention as the match itself-and rightfully so-is the pay disparity between men and women's sports. The U.S. Women's Team took home $2 million for their third World Cup victory. Last year, the German team won the Men's World Cup and took home $35 million, while the U.S. men took home $8 million after being eliminated in the first round of the tournament. The total payout for women in 2015 was $15 million. For the men in 2014, it was $576 million.
Obviously, FIFA, world soccer's governing body, has ethics in inverse proportion to its hundreds of millions of dollars in annual revenue-just imagine the NFL operating in multiple countries, with Bond villains at the helm. And FIFA President Sepp Blatter, who last month announced his resignation following corruption investigations, once suggested female players should wear "tighter shorts" to increase popularity (and incorrectly said that women play with a lighter ball). In 2014, a group of international players sued FIFA and the Canadian Soccer Association for gender discrimination after it was announced that the 2015 tournament would be played on artificial turf instead of real grass. Any moves toward making international soccer more equitable will clearly not be coming from inside FIFA.
But that of course does not mean criticism of FIFA should cease; nor does it mean we should ignore the very real inequality in U.S. sports. The National Women's Soccer League's minimum salary is $6,000, with salary caps for entire teams at only $200,000. In contrast, the MLS minimum is now $60,000. Writing in The Atlantic last month, Maggie Mertens made a compelling argument that support for women's soccer, or lack thereof, is a feminist issue.
Sports command enormous cultural and capitalist importance, and when players are compensated one-tenth as much as others for the exact same work simply because of their gender, we cannot pretend sports are frivolous, or that they are anything less than a deeply unequal workplace. And if it weren't for feminist achievements like Title IX, it is doubtful that the Americans would be as dominant on the world stage.
But lack of interest in women's sports is still the reason given for lack of pay equity-and for lack of coverage. And what follows this excuse is a shrug of shoulders at what appears to be circular problem: If fans were more interested in women's sports, there would be more coverage; if there were more coverage, fans would be more interested. But I don't buy it.
Sure, the bars were less crowded in D.C. than they were last summer for the men's World Cup. But I was heartened by the sight of so many men in U.S. jerseys at watch parties, and of male friends leaping from chairs to throw arms up after a goal. More than 25 million viewers tuned in on Sunday night-more than any soccer match (men or women) in U.S. history, and more than the recent NBA Finals. As Dave Zirin points out in The Nation, people are watching women's sports (when they can), and enjoying it. It is the broadcasters clinging to the sexist idea that no one does-or should-care about female athletes that has, as one 25-year study found, kept attention to women's sports averaging around just 5 percent of total coverage. Just as it is the fault of FIFA and women's leagues all over the world that don't pay their players fairly, it is also the fault of sports journalists and publications that choose to ignore those athletes, or, as that same study notes, offer coverage with a distinct lack of excitement. Not everything has to have the same intensity as Andrés Cantor's "Gol!" calls, but just imagine if women's sports got half the production value of the NBA draft.
Of course, there is one point that I haven't yet addressed, and that is that the style of play is very different between men and women's soccer. On this, I will concede.
