With the recent Women’s Euro Cup already concluded, an analysis has been made on the gender wage gap in football, taking that tournament as a reference.
In a year that, from the beginning, felt like a soccer year (it is the year of the World Cup in Qatar), a new edition of the Women’s Euro Cup was held in England, which concluded last Sunday, July 31, with the British hosts as champions.
We have spent an important time in which an effort has been made to equalize salaries between men’s and women’s soccer.
Given this, UEFA approved in September last year to double the budget for the 16 teams participating in the Women’s Euro Cup, for which 16 million euros have been allocated (more than 330 million Mexican pesos).
In addition, the body mentioned that, for the first time, a benefit program of 4.5 million euros will be introduced for clubs that loan players for the continental tournament.
As can be seen in the graph above, the gender pay gap in football, taking the Women’s Euro Cup as a reference, is very wide, despite the work that UEFA has done.
Of course, this is just a start and, in fact, there are different plans by the different organizations to equalize salaries between men and women. In the United States, for example, thanks to a “historic” payment agreement finalized earlier this year, the Soccer Federation in that country promised to pool all the prizes won by the men’s and women’s teams for the competitions in which both compete and distribute them equally.
Women’s football is growing by leaps and bounds
Globally, the International Federation of Football Association (FIFA) estimated that there are 13.36 million girls and women who play football in an organized way, but that is not all, since the highest governing body aims to increase female participation in football by around the world, their goal has already been stated: to reach 60 million players by 2026.
And it is that, in recent years, women’s soccer has been on the rise, both in popularity and in its participation within the content bars of the media.
In this way, it is important to highlight what a Digital Hub study mentions about the evolution of women’s soccer. The study states that, in 2019, The FIFA Women’s World Cup managed to attract a television audience of 1.12 billion people around the world and bring more than 1.1 million spectators to the stadiums of France.
Likewise, According to information from Nielsen IBOPE, the growth of women’s soccer has been 146 percent, which is why various interest groups place greater focus on promoting cultural change in favor of female inclusion.
In short, as women’s soccer grows, its business model will also grow, which can be translated as “good news” not only for the industry, but for that large group of young women who seek to earn a place that , historically, has been dominated by the male presence.