On a busy Sunday morning, I entered the last 90 minutes of my shift at a Starbucks in south Fremont. I thought to myself, “The good news is that I’ll be out of here in the time it takes to play a soccer game.”
Strangely enough, that would not be my only reminder of the sport I so passionately love.
In walked two-time FIFA Women’s World Cup champion and Olympic gold-medalist midfielder Brandi Chastain. I almost could not believe it and I would not believe it until I rang her up in which I confirmed that her name was indeed “Brandi” spelled with an “i.”
In addition to being blatantly starstruck, I abandoned my post at the register to take a picture with Chastain before she left but the part that ultimately surprised me was that no one else did the same. With the exception of one other coworker who knew who Chastain was, no one else at that packed cafe seemed to even notice the female global sports icon in the room that day.
While not being able to recognize someone like Chastain is in no way a sexist act in itself, the situation with Chastain at my Starbucks sheds a light on just how underappreciated and plainly “unseen” women are in the sport of soccer.
Chastain won two of the three FIFA Women’s World Cup titles secured by the United States Women’s National Soccer Team and yet the athletes on this three-time champion team aren’t treated nearly as well as the American men’s team.
The U.S. Men’s National Soccer Team has never won World Cups and the team became a source for global ridicule when it failed to qualify for the 2018 FIFA World Cup in Russia this past summer. Despite the men’s shortcomings, the American women’s team is still paid about four times less than its male counterparts, according to Sports Illustrated.
Despite generating more than $20 million in ticket and merchandise sales following their 2011 FIFA Women’s World Cup championship, American women players still receive less money than the men by a margin of up to $15,000 when it comes to appearance fees and playing in friendlies.
Sports Illustrated and ESPN report that for each friendly win, the United States Men’s National Team players are paid $17,625 whereas the women’s players are only paid $1,350. In addition, a friendly loss still results in $5,000 in revenue for the men’s team. This means that the men make more money after a loss than the women do with a win. This is nothing short of a national disgrace.
The sexism doesn’t just stop in the United States. Before stepping down in 2015 amid money laundering and extortion allegations, former FIFA president Sepp Blatter proposed to promote women’s soccer by oversexualizing its players. In 2011, Blatter suggested that the women play in more “feminine” uniforms that included “tighter and shorter shorts.”
While such plans for a uniform change never came to fruition, FIFA took money-saving liberties with the 2015 Women’s World Cup in Canada that they did not take in the 2014 FIFA Men’s World Cup in Brazil.
In Brazil, the men played on real turf whereas every pitch during the Canadian tournament contained artificial turf which costs half as much as real grass according to Forbes. While playing on the artificial turf, female players reported sustaining skin burns and additional damage to their skin.
“It is a gender equality issue. No chance would the men ever play a World Cup on fake turf,” U.S. Women’s National Team forward Sydney Leroux said in an interview with CBS News.
Leroux posted pictures of her shins on social media which showed her legs swollen and red after sliding on the polyurethane turf.
Despite the blatant double standard, women in soccer continue to make progress toward equality. In 2016, prominent members of the Women’s National Team including forward Abby Wambach and midfielder Carli Lloyd filed a class-action lawsuit with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission against U.S. Soccer in response to the obvious wage gap.
In June, women in Iran were allowed to watch the 2018 FIFA World Cup during a watch party held at Azadi Stadium in Tehran. It was the first time in the nation’s history that women were not legally barred from attending a sporting event of any kind.
Despite the progress made, there’s still far more to go on and off the pitch.
“Those things take time. You don’t turn those things around overnight but I feel we’re closer than we’ve ever been and I feel in my lifetime, pretty soon, that will happen,” Chastain said in a 2017 interview with Larry King.
