Not everybody is going to like this one.
The US Women’s soccer team won the Women’s World Cup. People are thrilled. And now the team and its supporters are crying for equal pay with men.
Look, I am a total supporter of equality between men and women – when it makes sense. Equal pay for equal work. No discrimination for jobs based on sex. There are many activities that women are better at than men, and I, of course, don’t mean cooking and cleaning. For example, in the ranks of world leaders, who’s better – Angela Merkel or Donald Trump? As Jefferson once said, self-evident.
But, there are some activities in which men and women are generally unequal. I say, “generally” because each case has to be judged on its merits and there are exceptions. But, men and women are a lot more different than are, say, black and white people or gays and straights.
One of those activities is sports.
Let’s take soccer as the timely example. Why is there a Women’s and a Men’s World Cup? If we are talking about equality, why isn’t there just one World Cup in which any gender can play? Would the US Women’s team win the Men’s World Cup if allowed to compete? We’ll never know for sure, but we’ll also never know for sure if I could have played center field for the Yankees. But, we can make a pretty good guess.
During the discussions the past few days about how the women’s win was such a landmark in equality, it was linked to another “landmark” – the Billy Jean King vs. Bobby Riggs match. Really? When those two played, Billy Jean King was 29 years old and had just won her fifth Wimbledon title. Riggs, on the other hand, was 55 years old and hadn’t won a major title in 32 years. That was a “landmark” in gender equality? As Joe Biden too often says, “C’mon man!”
Now, there is one good argument in favor of the women soccer players. It is the argument that exemplifies how we measure everything in capitalist America – money. The women say that they generate as much or more money than do the men and so they should be compensated accordingly. If that’s true, then they are right. In America, the value of services depends not how good they are, only on how much money they make. See, for example, teachers vs. hedge fund managers.
However, according to Forbes Magazine, the women aren’t right. Like everything else, it depends on how you figure it. In 2010, the Women’s World Cup generated $73 million in revenue and the players received $9.5 million, or 13% of that. The Men’s World Cup, on the other hand, generated $4 billion and the men received $36 million, or 9%. So, while the women certainly received less money, they actually received a greater percentage of what they earned.
O.K., that was 2010. How about now? Same thing. In 2018, the men generated $6 billion and the teams got a little under $42 million, or almost 7%. The recent Women’s World Cup is expected to generate $131 million and each team will get $30 million, or 23%.
As is often said, figures lie and liars figure. These numbers may not tell the whole story. But, they do tell a story, and it’s a story that also should be thrown into the mix when we talk about equality in sports.
We were right 