Arthur Crabtree wrote:I'd guess it would mean that male players would have to be paid the same too. Which is a long way from the case now. Equality means your first team left back is paid the same as your leading scorer.
Wage equality across the board was never the intention, and its arguable had the USA Womens position not been turned into some dramatically over hyped generic feminist question to uncover the the inequities of society against women, they might have won; in the end the reams of articles and campaigning for flat out equality turned the debate into farce, even at one point suggesting Ana Hegerberg should be paid 400k a week like Lionel Messi when he club generates not even 5 percent of that in monthly revenue.
Their original point was that their central contracts with the board remunerated them only 30 percent of the male team. This was found to be overblown tremendously and used data based on a defunct and previous collective agreement. The actual agreement set that measure at about 90 percent of the men, but again the way its calculated is far more nuanced. Women could earn less than men, but in short, they didnt. In the unlikely situation that the male team won every single of their 20 annual games, their bonus based pay paid slightly more, but the women received a flat 100k guaranteed annual fee for being named in a team. The men got 5K per win plus a small apperance fee if they played. So hypothetically, a lady squad player in a team that never won a game and who didnt play would earn 100k, the male counterpart earned nothing. As USA have never won 20 matches in a row, it also meant no males actually earned more.
Even hypothetically, if male were to earn more than women by being tremendously successful, this is based on revenue streams in play. The argument is women bring in slightly more revenue, which seems true if limited to ticket sales and sponsorship.... but if the males qualify for the world cup, the revenue prize pot is 450 million.... the womens equivalent is 30. Its not hard to see how actually, relative success of the women is not equivalent in financial terms. If the males make a world cup, there is a massive windfall. If the women make it, the money hardly justifies the expense on a whole. And the men can fail to qualify for years, make on one world cup, and instantly wipe the success of the women under he carpet in money. So if the men were to be as successful as the women and got paid only 11 percent more, it would be tremendously unfair... the men would justify millions in prize payments.
It boils down really to how valuable these women are to the status of American sport. Is it fair that such a dominant force is paid so low, regardless of what males earn? The answer to that question relates to what economic value that success has, and in truth they probably earn as much as their worth... if thats too low, its tough luck. You cant demand wages from your employer that completely destroy your profit model. Football is a sport that on a whole is a net loss, most teams plough all revenues into wages and being the best team they can.... so really, as a fair business model; the women can complain. They get a great cut of the available pie until its all gone, if there is no pie left for a bigger slice, its because people arent interested in what you are doing.