history of women’s football
The history of women’s football is not easy. Having had its heyday during and after the First World War, with examples such as the “munitionettes” in the United Kingdom and the teams of the French Federation of Women’s Sports Societies, the FSFSF fell into oblivion until the mid-1960s.
For almost 50 years, the practice of this sport was difficult for women around the world. In fact, soccer was considered “incompatible with femininity” and, in general, female players were denied access to the fields (by law in Brazil and by the threat of sanctions for clubs in other countries).
A century after 1918 armistice women represented between 7 and 8% of all players in France, with some 150,000 registered members, although this number is increasing rapidly (growing more than fourfold in the last 20 years) . Undoubtedly, this rebound is related to the increased media coverage of women’s football in recent years, which has improved its image and encouraged its practice.
Why do women earn less than men?
To understand this phenomenon we will take as an example the Division 1 Féminine that It is considered the best women’s league in Europe according to UEFA.
Generally speaking, a distinction must be made between associations and clubs when addressing the issue of pay equity between footballers. A women’s national team can raise the issue of equal pay for international players: federations, like governments, are free to define a redistribution policy. However, club football is different and depends on economic factors.
The ratio between the average salary of men and women is 27 to 1. This imbalance is not the result of discrimination, but rather the size of the “cake” to be divided: in 2019 the budget of Ligue 1 (championship of France men’s) amounted to 1,900 million euros (837,294,515,275.00 Mexican pesos), while that of Division 1 (women’s championship) was 19 million euros, one hundredth of the men’s budget.
