In Any Sport, the Gender Pay Gap Remains

By Sarah Soutoul

Caroline Stanley was once a journalism student at the University of Southern California, playing on its NCAA soccer team. Three years later, Stanley has now played for three different professional soccer teams statewide.

Following her studies, Stanley’s skills on the soccer field were recognized by the Seattle Reign FC team as she became a discovery player for the team. This means Stanley was eligible for the draft but did not register for it, which made her only available for selection by the team until the upcoming season is complete. Therefore, the start of her professional career as a soccer player turned out to be challenging.

“When I got to Seattle, since I wasn’t signed yet, I wasn’t making any money,” she said. “In fact, I didn’t have a contract sold out half way through the season, and did not make any money for the first two months.”

According to Stanley, most of female soccer players who are starting to play professionally are forced to take other jobs on the side to earn enough money to sustain themselves. For Stanley, coaching was the side job she chose, the solution that enabled her to make enough money for a living, but most importantly, the only way she was able to keep living off her passion.

Stanley’s story is common to many professional female soccer players. Casja Lundstrom, who left her home country of Sweden to play for St Leo University’s soccer team in Northeast Florida, also believes having a job on the side is a must for female athletes starting professionally.

“It is very hard to live as a female soccer player without having a job on the side, and that can’t be a job that takes a lot of time with the amount of training you have,” she said. “If you don’t have a job or anyone supporting you, it is not easy to live off your sport if you are not the best player in the world.”

For Jessica Haidet, who currently plays for the USC women’s soccer team, she had to be realistic regarding her dream to play professionally after graduation.

“If I could support myself off of going pro, there would be no question in my mind, ‘Why wouldn’t I?’ ” she said. “But, it’s not really realistic. It’s in my mind that I would like to go pro, but I’m also trying to focus on academics here, because I know that’s what I will have to rely on largely after college.”

Haidet further explained that one of her male counterparts went straight into a draft without going to college, and managed to live off his sport. But, she believes that if she had followed the same path, “there would have been nothing for her."

Hear the story of Jessica Haidet

Currently playing for the USC Soccer Team, Jessica Haidet reveals the struggles and obstacles she faces every day as a female soccer player.

Gender inequalities in sports have always been huge, both on the professional and college level. Indeed, even though athletes on the college level don’t receive a salary, women still get less funding overall than their male counterparts, caused by “the hegemony of football programs that suck up huge amounts of resources," according to Michael Messner, author of many books on gender inequities in sports.

But, gender inequities in sports on college campuses have radically decreased with the implementation of the Title IX law. Passed in 1972 by Congress, Title IX is federal civil rights legislation banning any forms of gender discrimination and providing men and women with equitable sports opportunities in educational institutions, with athletic programs falling into this category.

Messner argues Title IX “has been hugely important as a legal basis for girls and women fighting for equity in school-based sports in the U.S.”

Indeed, this law radically changed women’s sports on college campuses as female athletes were able to achieve better equality by receiving higher amounts of money and resources as well as a greater recognition overall for their athletic performances.”

“However, a simple cross-national comparison will show that women’s sports have taken off in other countries too, not under the jurisdiction of Title IX,” he added. “That is because of the women’s movement, which I see as the primary driver of girls’ and women’s movement into sports.”

Among all gender inequities in sports, the wage gap appears to be the biggest one of all, and the main obstacle preventing college female players to pursue their passion professionally. While the gender pay gap is prominent in several sports, soccer has recently been the center of a heated debate on gender pay inequities.

It started when five prominent members of the the USA women’s soccer team (USWNT) brought into light the immensity of the wage gap on the field, after they made considerably less money that the men’s soccer team even by being three-time winners of the Women’s World Cup.

In March 2016, Carli Lloyd, Becky Sauerbrunn, Alex Morgan, Megan Rapinoe and Hope Solo filed a federal complaint with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission to accuse U.S. Soccer of wage discrimination, in which they revealed that their team is paid almost four times less than the USMNT despite performing better and producing nearly $20 million more in revenues for U.S. Soccer than the men’s national team.

According to Michael Messner, this report had led to enormous progress in reducing inequalities for women on the soccer field.

“It is fascinating to see how top women athletes like the U.S. Soccer have organized to press for equal pay,” said Messner. “Just as with any form of paid labor, athletes need to organize to leverage more fairness.”

Caroline Stanley was playing professionally for Orlando when this report was filed, and her salary increased as a result. She said her minimum wage went from $6,500 for the entire season in 2016 to $15,000 in 2017 with the implementation of her league’s games on television.

For female and male athletes playing nationally, it’s a different story. Indeed, payment structures implemented to compensate men and women of national soccer teams completely differ, leading to a wide gender wage gap. Both teams are required to play at least 20 matches during a single season. Women earn a base salary of $72,000 per year if playing those 20 required matches as well as a $1,350 bonus for every win.

Players of the USA men’s soccer team, however, do not receive a base salary at all, but are paid for making rosters, playing in matches, winning matches, and even for losing them. The men’s team win a total of $17,625 for every win, and receive $5,000 for every loss. The biggest difference here is that male athletes are still earning more than their female counterparts even with the addition of women’s base salary of $72,000.

If a men’s national soccer team loses all 20 matches, each player would still earn $100,000 in a given season. Meanwhile, a female player would earn only $99,000 in this exact same season even if the USWNT won all 20 matches.

“The way the national female team is being paid is so absurd, especially with the men’s team not being successful and qualifying for the world cup,” Stanley said when asked about the wage gap for national soccer teams.

“Hopefully, because men were not qualified for the world cup, people are going to take the women’s team a little bit more seriously in terms of the wage gap,” she added.

Gender Inequities: a Challenge for all Female Athletes

The lack of opportunities and money is not only a struggle for female soccer players, but also for female athletes in general. For D1 French swimmer Valerie Inghels, who graduated from Florida International University, her passion for swimming slowly faded when seeing the lack of resources in her sport for women.

“It is expensive to train full time unless there are sponsors involved,” she said. “Swimming is not like basketball or soccer; clubs don’t recruit and pay as much as other sports.”

Another French athlete, Amélie Guinci, played volleyball for Old Dominion University, hoping she could one day play professionally back in Europe. But, instead, she decided to focus on her professional career.

“It’s very hard for women to go pro because the wages are so low unless you’re in the national team of your country or win the Olympics,” she said. “It’s maybe why a lot of players give up after college, to rather focus on their professional career, and this is what I did.”

Other gender inequalities than the wage gap are experienced by college athletes or professional athletes in their sport. One of them is body shaming, as women athletes are expected to “look athletic," in the words of Valerie Inghels, D1 swimmer.

“You’re constantly under scrutiny when it comes to your body – not only by other teammates but by your coaches and support staff,” she said. “Some girls on the team and myself were put into a special group to train more and lose weight to become more athletic, whereas none of the guys would ever be put in that group.”

The lack of credit and acknowledgment is another challenge female athletes have to face. Since she started playing basketball, Marguerite Effa, who now plays for the USC women’s basketball team, has always been put down by men around her for being a female athlete.

“Boys in my surroundings were like ‘Oh you’re not as strong as boys,’ or ‘you can’t run as fast,’ but I proved them wrong,” she said. “I could keep up with the boys. I could run as fast as them. I could jump as high as them.”

“We [women athletes] have always been looked down on, but it’s unfortunate because we can empower children— little girls that want to be great in the sport,” she added.

Like Marguerite, Jessica Haidet had to fight and gain confidence in her sport to be able to overcome the lack of credit from her male counterparts.

“Males in general don’t give you the credit that you think you deserve as an athlete,” said Haidet. “I had people tell me ‘if I could play on the women’s team, I would make it at USC’, and this is something females in general and female athletes have to deal with.”

Some would argue that there has been enormous progress in reducing inequities for women in sports. However, from the point of view of female athletes, there is still a long way to go before women get the same amount of compensation and recognition received by their male counterparts.

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED © USC ANNENBERG MEDIA 2018

Design: Sarah Soutoul & Stefani Urmas

Coding: Sarah Soutoul & Peggy Bustamante