The weight of a loss
Last month, the United States Women’s National Team surprised its fans after an early elimination from the Olympic Games, where they were the favorite team to take home the gold medal for Women’s Soccer.
Carli Lloyd and her teammates won the women’s World Cup in 2015 against Japan in a match that was the most watched soccer event in American television history, with 25.4 million viewers — 7 million more than the men’s final. Despite the popularity the sport has in the United States, members of the team still have to fight for fair salaries, and their Olympic loss put a huge bump on their journey towards equality.
Earlier this year, Carli Lloyd, Becky Sauerbrunn, Alex Morgan, Megan Rapinoe and Hope Solo launched a campaign against wage discrimination. Believe it or not, even though these women won three World Cup titles and their team is ranked number one by FIFA, they still are paid 66% less than their male counterparts, whose best World Cup qualification was third place in… 1930. In 2015, the women’s team made $16 million in revenue, while the men’s lost $2 million. On top of that, whenever a male player loses a match, he still earns a $5,000 bonus just for playing. The women? $1,350 only if their team wins.
But the discrimination doesn’t stop on the wage differences. The men’s teams are rarely required to play on AstroTurf — the technical name given to fake grass. All the prestigious soccer tournaments use real grass, while the women’s World Cup doesn’t mind putting their players in the artificial version. Female teams from all over the world have been complaining about AstroTurf because it can be slippery and is often poorly installed, creating several opportunities for accidents. Sydney Leroux Dwyer shared on Twitter a picture of her legs after a game that would make grown men cry.
The players’ demands are nothing but fair — even though their team is much superior to the mens’, they are only asking for equal pay and equal work conditions. They managed to draw attention to the cause by refusing to play a few games and going on the Daily Show with Trevor Noah to talk about the issue. However, when the Olympics came, everything changed.
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It all started with Hope Solo’s controversial declarations a few weeks before the team went to Brazil. Solo openly shared her concerns about the Zika virus, a disease that can potentially cause microcephaly in unborn babies. Even though her complaints were relevant, the way she approached the subject wasn’t well received by the media and especially by Brazilian soccer fans, who showered Solo with chants of “Zika! Zika!” every time she touched the ball.
Solo’s team ended up losing to Sweden in the quarterfinals and she didn’t take it very gracefully, accusing the rivals of being “a bunch of cowards”. Once again, Solo’s comments hit the news and created some bad press not only for her, but for the entire team. Since she is one of the strongest advocates in the equal pay campaign, her suspension until next February severely damaged the movement, which was already weakened by the Olympic elimination. Even though Solo has a pretty controversial personal life, her actions shouldn’t invalidate everything the team has managed to conquer so far.
Something similar is happening to the Brazilian team, who lost the bronze medal to Canada. The country that loves soccer spends millions of dollars every year to support big names in their men’s team, but only a few years ago the women were still wearing leftover men’s jerseys. In 2014, when the World Cup happened in Brazil, the men’s team lost to Germany with an embarrassing score of 7 to 1. The women’s team never won a World Cup, but they always deliver a solid performance, despite the fact that some of the players need to find part-time jobs elsewhere if they want to make a living.
Marta, elected best female player in the world five times, earns $400,000 every year to play in the national team. Meanwhile, Neymar, the men’s biggest star, earns $14,5 million. His paycheck is about 36 times bigger than Marta’s, but his goal count is 50% smaller. And that’s not the worst part: after the women’s team’s elimination from the Olympics this year, the Brazilian Soccer Commission (CBF) is discussing the termination of the team. That’s because they ended in 4th place.
Next time you watch a match of any kind of women’s sports, remember that they are not playing for personal glory or money: they are playing for the right to exist.
