Female Sports Persuasive Essay

In response to watching the Women’s World Cup this summer, I read how the World Cup female soccer players were treated differently than the males. After the US Women’s team won the tournament the won $2 million for the team to split and the men whom got knocked out the in their second game were awarded $4 million dollars. It got me wondering how deep does this unfair treatment and sexism go in sports, especially soccer. After much research, I now know that…

If you really dive into the World Cup earnings it makes sense that the female’s winner only won $2 million and the male counterpart, Germany, won $35 million. The women won less because there was a much smaller pool of money to be drawn out of. The Women’s World Cup divided $15 million for

11 teams and the men had $476 million to split across 32 teams. Calculated out the U.S Women’s Team earned a higher percentage of their pool than did the German Men’s Team (Bramham Playing). Even though the females won a higher percentage, they did not win equal. So in this instance it’s not the wages, it’s the opportunity. Females get way less opportunity on TV and advertisement for their games, so it is no wonder why they have less money to draw out of. But this higher percentage is very rare and in most cases females get a lower percentage.
Early this April, The United States Women’s National Soccer Team (USWNT) fled Instagram and Twitter their equal play, equal pay movement. Five of the team’s stars filed a lawsuit against the US Soccer Federation, concerning their wages. The movement is pretty simple, the women play at the same level as the men, and therefore they should get the same earnings. But the women actually had a larger revenue then the men last year. This is very unjust, normally in the US, if you make more you earn more. Just like a car dealership—the person who sells the most cars get paid and the most, with the best perks.
There are very few female athletes with lucrative endorsements and million-dollar earnings, of the few they compete in individual sports like tennis or golf. For female team sports, there’s barely enough money to sustain the stars, let alone the entire team. For example the U.S National Women’s soccer League’s salary cap is $265,000, a team, not a player. That is about 1/13th of the men’s equivalent league (Bramham Playing). With that money for most women a college degree is a necessity to sustain themselves during and after their soccer career. Similar pay gaps occur across other sports—with the exception of tennis, which since 2007 has awarded equal prize money at all Grand Slam tournaments (Mlambo). Tennis should be the model for all sports federations. By putting wages equal you put male and female sports on the same, respectable level, where they can have the opportunity to thrive.
The economic reality is the female sports are not as lucrative as the men’s.

They attract smaller audiences and therefore less advertising money. A recent study found that women’s sports receive 7% of media coverage and less than 1% of commercial sponsorship compared to men (Baxter). So it is no surprise that when Fox bid for the broadcasting rights for the next two men’s World Cups, The International Federation of Association Football (FIFA) demanded it take the women’s tournament for free. There is simply no audience for female sports. Therefore, FIFA believed there was no reason to try and sell the broadcasting rights (Bramham Playing). Attitudes like that shape our society to believe that women sports are a

joke.
The thing that makes sports so thrilling are the story lines and stakes. And that's not inherent to gender. Why are we interested in our kid's YMCA socer game? Because we have the story line--there's my daughter out there playing a game she loves—at the stakes--this is really important to her. So we don't care whether she can kick the ball far, or trip over it. It doesn’t matter (Baxter). So why should it matter when they are fifteen years older? How can we have such contradicting views? The story line nor the stakes change. The only thing that changes is the view we have on the female, she is no longer a girl playing games, but a women wasting her life on a game. Women are held back with the exact issue they face every day about “a woman’s place” (Bramham Finding).
“Worldwide, it remains true that beauty not brawn, matters most when it comes to female athletics.” This issue is not just an issue for soccer, other female sports fight the same issue. In the Olympics, beach volleyball players are required to wear tight, brief bikinis (Bramham, Finding). Although wearing little cloths on a hot summer day in the sand may be practical in some cases, it should not be required. The president of FIFA mused that women’s soccer might be more popular if the women wore tighter and shorter shorts (Bramham, Finding). Comments like this from the president himself, are demeaning and disrespectful. Sports shouldn’t be judges on the articles of clothing but the game itself. Nobody would ever make a remark like this towards a male, because nobody even pays attention to their uniforms.
This beauty over brawn issue isn’t just in the cloths these athletes wear, it’s also in the tone we talk about female sports.

When talking about female sports rarely we talk about the skill and aggregation. We take about how good their hair looks or the uniforms they wear. But when we do talk about female sports, we compare them to their male counterparts. For example an outstanding player is Brazil, Marta, if talked about at all, is referred to Pele with a skirt. Pele was the best player is Brazil for many years, and was an incredible player. Some may that is a complement, but instead of being called Pele she should be called Marta, the greatest player Brazil has ever

seen.
President Obama welcomed the Women’s National Team to the white house last fall by saying “playing like a girl means you’re a badass.” He became the loudest voice in the continuously growing chorus acknowledging female sports equality (Baxter). I think we need more male leaders, and role-models to emphasize that “playing like a girl” does not mean playing poorly.
I think I’ve established that there is a lot of sexism during a female athlete’s career, but what about when they retire? If the athlete wants to become a sports editor, it is nearly impossible. One out of every sports editors are female (Bramham Finding). Sports editors are not the only sports-related jobs that female have trouble getting and keeping. Women have historically been under-represented as referees, coaches, and positions in sporting federations and administration, even for women’s teams. Of the 24 teams in the Women’s World Cup, only eight have female coaches, there are no on the men’s side. Of the 32 directors, only three of them are females. This is wrong they should have equal representation in the highest position in the soccer world. Since there are less female teams, they should at least get proportional representation, because the decisions the FIFA directors make equally impact both the females and the men.
After the women won the World Cup there was a huge uproar about the females’ winnings. A massive sexism debate arose, the question being, are sports industries sexist? The simple answer is yes, but not because of wages it is rooted much deeper than that, it is rooted in our society.