soccer is for life

Women’s football is one of the fastest-growing sports globally, yet the gender pay gap remains stark. Even in nations with elite women’s programs, female footballers can earn as little as one-hundredth of the sums paid to their male counterparts. For example, in 2017, the average salary in the English Premier League was £2.64 million, compared to just £26,752 in the equivalent women’s league. Recent high-profile legal challenges, such as the lawsuit
filed by the United States Women’s National Team (USWNT) alleging “institutionalized gender discrimination,” have brought this issue to the forefront. This essay outlines three distinct moral arguments supporting the obligation of national football associations to pay men’s and women’s teams equally.

1. The Labor Rights Argument: Equal Pay for Equal Work

The most straightforward defense of equal pay is the principle that equal work deserves equal remuneration. National team players, regardless of gender, compete at the highest level, playing games of the same duration and dedicating equivalent time to training. When two employees perform equivalent work, paying them differently based on gender is discriminatory and morally wrong.

Critics often counter that male athletes generate higher commercial revenue, justifying higher wages. However, this defense does not apply universally. For instance, in 2015, the USWNT generated a profit of $6.6 million compared to the men’s $2 million, yet the women were still paid less. While the commercial value objection limits the scope of this argument for some nations, it remains a powerful ground for equal pay where women’s teams are
equally or more profitable than men’s.

2. The Expressive Power Argument

Wages do not merely compensate labor; they communicate value. In capitalist societies, wages have “expressive power,” signaling an employee’s worth. In football, high wages explicitly signal sporting excellence, as seen when club presidents justify record salaries by claiming the best player in the world “should be the best player in the world in all aspects, even economically”.

Consequently, the vast pay gap sends a damaging message: that female players possess less professional and sporting worth than men. By committing to equal pay, national associations would send a powerful message of professional respect, affirming that women’s football is as valuable as men’s. While this argument provides a strong moral reason for
equal pay, some argue it may not constitute a strict obligation if the financial resources are not available.

3. The Argument from Historical Injustice

The strongest moral obligation for equal pay arises from the history of discrimination. For decades, national associations actively hampered the development of the women’s game. The English Football Association, for instance, banned women’s football from 1921 to 1971, explicitly declaring the sport “unsuitable for females” despite its immense popularity at the time.

This historical context is crucial for two reasons:

1. Responsibility for Commercial Disparity: Associations cannot use the “lower commercial value” of women’s football as an excuse for lower pay, because they are the ones responsible for creating that disparity through decades of prohibition.
2. Duties of Reparation: Because these associations committed historical wrongs that continue to harm female players today, they owe “duties of reparation”. Equal pay acts as a form of reparation, mitigating the effects of past injustice. Even if an association cannot afford to simply raise women’s pay, they have a political responsibility to restructure their finances, potentially by redistributing funds from men’s wages, as done by the Norwegian Football Association, to ensure equality.

Equal pay acts as a form of reparation, mitigating the effects of past injustice. Even if an association cannot afford to simply raise women’s pay, they have a political responsibility to restructure their finances, potentially by redistributing funds from men’s wages, as done by the Norwegian Football Association, to ensure equality.

Conclusion

While the “Equal Pay for Equal Work” argument applies strongly to commercially successful teams like the USWNT, the “Historical Injustice” argument creates a broader moral obligation for associations worldwide. National associations are not passive bystanders to market forces; they are institutions with a history of discrimination and a political responsibility to fix the structures they broke. Achieving equal pay is not just a matter of labor rights; it is a necessary step in repairing the damage of the past and respecting the value of women athletes today.

Bibliography

• Dobos, N. (2019). Exploitation, Working Poverty, and the Expressive Power of Wages. Journal of Applied Philosophy, 36(2), 333-347.
• Fédération Internationale de Football Association (FIFA). (2014). Women’s Football Survey
• Sporting Intelligence. (2017). Global Sports Salary Survey 2017: The Gender (In) Equality Issue. http://globalsportssalaries.com/
• Tate, T. (2013). Women’s Football: The Secret History. London: John Blake Publishing.
• Williams, J. (2007). A Beautiful Game: International Perspectives on Women’s Football. Oxford/New York: Berg.
• Young, I. M. (2011). Responsibility and Historic Injustice. In I. M. Young (Ed.), Responsibility for Justice. Oxford: Oxford University Press.