For all the confetti-drenched celebrations, the sold-out stadiums, and the well-curated Instagram posts that now accompany women’s football, one truth remains stubbornly immovable: the money hasn’t caught up. Fame has. Cultural relevance has. Viewership numbers astonishingly have. But economic reality? That still lags embarrassingly behind, like an outdated scoreboard blinking the wrong winner.
It’s a peculiar contradiction. We live in a moment when a women’s football match can draw bigger television audiences than men’s games in the same league. Girls walk into schoolyards proudly wearing the jerseys of their favourite female players. Federation executives beam while announcing record-breaking attendance figures, as if such achievements naturally translate into paychecks. And yet, tucked away from the cameras and literally behind the gleaming stadiums, many women footballers are packing their own sandwiches for training or juggling two part-time jobs to afford rent.
Let us state the obvious: no one enters women’s football to get rich. Passion is the currency, resilience the capital. But passion does not pay medical bills. Resilience cannot make up for the years shaved off a player’s career because she lacked the financial security to seek proper rehabilitation. These athletes train with the same ferocious commitment as men, often in worse conditions, sometimes on fields that would make a Sunday league team complain. But when it comes to compensation, they are paid like hobbyists who should feel grateful for the “opportunity.”
The most telling detail is not that women footballers earn less. It’s how we’ve normalized it. Society, with an unsettling blend of politeness and complacency, accepts the discrepancy as though it were a natural law of physics. “Market forces,” we’re told, as if the invisible hand of economics has an inexplicable fondness for masculinised sports and an allergy to women’s athletic excellence. But market forces are not a divine act; they are human decisions, human investments, human distributions of attention and resources. They can change if we choose to change them.
Consider the women who play in the lower or even mid-tier divisions: they may receive stipends rather than salaries. Some must negotiate with employers to adjust work schedules around training sessions. Others quietly retire at twenty-seven, not because their talent evaporated, but because their bank accounts did. The professionalization of women’s football remains partial, uneven, and fragile. A player signing a contract does not mean financial stability; it often means calculated survival.
Of course, there are exceptions that get paraded around, a star player who lands a lucrative sponsorship deal or a national federation proud to announce upgraded bonuses. But these examples function like decorative window displays, masking the cramped, uneven inventory inside. We celebrate the handful of women who break through the financial ceiling without acknowledging the thousands who hit their heads against it daily.
The economic gap is also reflective of a subtler, more insidious narrative: that women’s sports are worthy only when they can be packaged as inspirational, wholesome, or symbolically empowering. The moment we begin talking about money, real, substantial, inconvenient money, people get notably uncomfortable. Women athletes are allowed to inspire the next generation, but demanding fair compensation somehow makes them ungrateful. It’s a bizarre double standard: men’s anger is ambition; women’s ambition is audacity.
And here lies the irony no one wants to admit: women’s football has never been more commercially viable than it is today. Major tournaments draw global audiences. Jerseys sell out. Streaming numbers spike. Kids, boys and girls, idolize these athletes. The appetite is there. What’s missing is the structural courage to treat women athletes not as special projects to be applauded, but as professionals who deserve what professionals earn.
We should also acknowledge that progress is happening, though haltingly. Some leagues are raising minimum salaries. Some clubs are investing in better facilities. A few federations have adopted equal pay structures. These are steps worth celebrating, but cautiously, for they remain uneven and often symbolic. Progress should not be measured against past injustices but against the standard of fairness, a standard still unmet.
There is also a cultural shift underway. Fans are increasingly vocal about the inequity, calling out federations and demanding accountability. Social media has amplified the voices of players who, in previous generations, might have been quietly dismissed. This pressure matters. Change rarely begins in boardrooms; it begins in public conversations like these, in the collective refusal to accept “that’s just how it is.”
Ultimately, the economic undervaluation of women’s football is not merely a sports issue. It is a microcosm of how society assigns worth: who gets rewarded for excellence, who is expected to sacrifice, who is seen as an investment versus an expense. Women footballers are not asking for special treatment. They are asking for the same respect that men receive automatically, the respect of being taken seriously, contractually and financially.
In time, perhaps we’ll look back on this era with a tinge of embarrassment, wondering how we applauded so loudly and paid so little. The day will come when a girl dreaming of becoming a professional footballer will not also be dreaming of a backup job. But that day won’t arrive on its own.
It will arrive when we decide that talent, sweat, and commitment are not gendered commodities and that the game, in all its beauty and brutality, is richer when everyone on the pitch is valued accordingly.
No comments:
Post a Comment