The other day, I was working on a project and I typed into Google, “national team defenders soccer”. I meant women defenders in my search, but I forgot to specify. But, shockingly for me, I found barely any women defenders in the search results. I scrolled down, and found a Business Insider article that was titled “The 10 best defenders in world soccer right now”, and none of them were women. They didn’t specify men or women in their title, but in the whole their article in a way implied that none of the top ten defenders in the world right now are women. Eventually after I looked hard enough and clicked “see more” I found about one website and three female defenders scattered in the list, next to the bottom of the search query. I’d guess about 97% of the results were of mens players and 3% were of women. In my mind, haven’t the women’s national team proven themselves? They are phenomenal athletes, easily compatible with the men’s defenders, so why don’t an equal number of them pop up in the search results as men? This made me angry. 

This situation is just one of the numerous inequalities between men and women in sports. One of the biggest and most prominent of these is equal (or not equal) pay.

In 2014, the USMNT (United States Men’s National Team) won $9 million  for making it into the Round of 16 before being eliminated because of a loss. In 2015, the USWNT (United States Women’s National Team) won $2  million  for winning the entire World Cup. Furthermore, no women’s team playing in a FIFA (Fédération Internationale de Football) tournament received prize money for anything prior to 2007. 

This is appalling. Sometimes women and men have different strategies for playing a sport (like more physicality), but that is just a stereotype. Some people may even go so far as to argue that men are better at sports, and more athletic than women, like in an article published by A Sip of Sports, where the author claims that “Men are better athletes than women. This is not a controversial position I’m taking, it’s a factual, and at one point in human history, obvious statement.” The author goes on to  argue that “pretending” that women can do what men can do diminishes women’s sports. Furthermore, in several other articles published by A Sip of Sports, they continue to say in blunt sentences to support their argument “men are better at sports than women”. I strongly disagree with this. My thoughts on this situation are that men are different athletes than women. I’ve heard several times that women usually develop stronger leg muscles, while men usually develop stronger upper-body strength. Every person is different, even. Really good mens players don’t even compare to other mens players, even. Not all men and not all women are the same. 

As for success rates, the USWNT have won four World Cups. They hadn’t placed any lower than third place before the 2023 World Cup. On the other hand, the USMNT have never won a World Cup, they’ve never even made it to a World Cup final. (This is pretty crazy considering there have been 22 total men's World Cups, beginning in 1930, and only nine women’s world cups, beginning in 1991. This puts the men’s team’s success rate as of World Cups at 0/22, or just zero, and the women’s at 4/9, which is nearly half. Additionally, the women’s team has placed in 8/9 World Cups, while the men's team has placed in 1/22, and that was Bronze in 1930.)

 And for a very long time, after the 1999 World Cup Final the women’s team has had higher TV viewership, and was bringing in much more money than the men’s team. Reporter Caitlin Murray talked about this in her book The National Team: Inside the Story of the Women Who Changed Soccer (2019), which I recently read. Sadly, a lot of the money and popularity for the US Soccer Federation that was primarily brought in by the women’s team was being used to pay the men’s salaries and pay for friendlies that the men’s team (bringing in more money) played. These statistics are for regular yearly friendlies. Continually, comparing the 2018 Men’s World Cup Final and the 2019 Women’s World Cup Final, the women’s Cup had 22% more TV viewership than the mens. 

FIFA, on the other hand, treats  the women’s tournaments as much less than the men’s tournaments. The USWNT earned $6 million in total for its World Cup wins in 2015 and 2019  ($2 million in 2015 and $4 million in 2019). The 2019 Women’s World Cup total prize money was $30 million, also doubled from the $15 million in 2015.

On the other hand, at the men’s World Cup in 2022, the winner of the tournament got $42 million and the total prize money was $440 million, which is  over fourteen times as much as the women’s champion can earn. Crazily, due to an “equal pay” agreement recently  signed by the US Soccer Federation (that still doesn’t make things entirely fair), the women’s and men's teams in the USA split the prize money. That means that the women's team earned more from the men’s team making it to the knockout round in 2023 than they made for winning two World Cups.

In conclusion, some people argue that we have made it to an age where there is no more gender discrimination. But I say we still have a ways to go, and soccer is just one example.