The only way to resolve this recurring debate is to encourage the truly elite female athletes in any sport to try out for a men's professional team or compete on the men's circuit. If they are good enough to make the cut, then they have the option to negotiate a decent contract.
It is not going to happen any time soon.
A female hockey goaltender may have a very slight shot.
But it is not going to happen anytime soon.
End of story.
3
I play tennis. On infrequent occasions I hit a glorious shot that might bring applause at a pro match. But such shots are the exception that proves the rule: I am not of high caliber.
The author's point that female pros could beat average males is doubtless correct. The following story from Wikipedia might provide some insight into the numbers involved:
Another event dubbed a "Battle of the Sexes" took place during the 1998 Australian Open between Karsten Braasch and the Williams sisters. Venus and Serena Williams had claimed that they could beat any male player ranked outside the world's top 200, so Braasch, then ranked 203rd, challenged them both. Braasch was described by one journalist as "a man whose training regime centered around a pack of cigarettes and more than a couple of bottles of ice cold lager". The matches took place after Braasch had finished a round of golf and two shandies. With a broken wrist and a badly sprained ankle following a bar brawl he first took on Serena and after leading 5–0, beat her 6–1. Venus then walked on court and again Braasch was victorious, this time winning 6–2. Braasch said afterwards, "500 and above, no chance". He added that he had played like someone ranked 600th in order to keep the game "fun" and that the big difference was that men can chase down shots much easier and put spin on the ball that female players can't handle. The Williams sisters adjusted their claim to beating men outside the top 350.[
5
13-0 isn't very dramatic.
1
The Women's World Cup doesn't bring in as much revenue as the Men's? Well, they're leaving money on the table. Before crunching the numbers, make some effort to take advantage of the enthusiasm surrounded the tournament. I traveled to Montreal four years ago with money burning a hole in my pocket. I was going to by myself and my kids jerseys, flags, scarves, balls, key chains, the works. It took me till the third game to FIND the one hole-in-the-wall souvenir shop. Nobody was selling anything outside the stadium or in the stands. There were a few generic jerseys, no team jerseys, certainly no player-specific jerseys. I had to buy a dirty floor model of a soccer ball because that was all that was left - and this was still during group play, not the knockout rounds. Why, even if the stores don't normally stock them, WHY can't I buy jerseys at every chain sporting goods store this month? Why isn't Walmart stocking Morgan and Rapinoe t-shirts?? WHY not take advantage of that market?? Where are the billboards? The advertising on TV to remind people to tune in? My 92 year-old grandmother watches TV 11 hours a day, and she had no idea the WWC was this year until I told her on Thursday; now she's watching every game.
I suggest if you want a primer in male privilege and misogyny you need to look no further the the comment section of any article about women's sports equality.
3
@Kris
Yes it is men's fault that we chose to be born with slimmer hips, greater muscle and testosterone, thicker bones, larger lung and heart capacity, and larger frames than women. Of course absolutely none of this is relevant to physical competition...
7
A team of boys could beat handily the best women's soccer team in the world, game after game after game. Not enough people watch women's soccer to attract the sponsorship and TV money that men's soccer does. This is not unfair. This is not the patriarchy. This is sex. This is real life. Get over it.
8
Totally agree. When I want my son to learn how basketball should be played, we attend a WNBA game. Watching women'a soccer helps my son understand the importance of playing together, of precision over power and knowing what to do when you don't have the ball at your feet. When I go to my local park and I see so many women running, so many women playing baseball or softball, and enjoying participating in sport, I know that this is a Title IX miracle. What has happened since 1970 should be reflected in how the sports establishment respects and supports organized women's sport.
2
This 66 year old male is largely disgusted after reading countless comments from other men justifying why the best woman's game is not equal to the man's game. I beg to differ. In terms of quickness, game awareness, game intelligence, smart passing, effort, comraderie, competiveness, enthusiasm and good, old fashioned guts women are every bit the equal of their male counterparts. They put in equal time and effort to be world class athletes so they can ride in coach to the World Cup while the men... you know the story. Which reminds me, probably the largest area where women athletes absolutely trounce men, is humility. They are just now speaking up how little they earn for equal effort and skill, while free-agent men making 25 million a year complain how they are underpaid.
Yes, revenue drives salary. Still, women deserve living wages compensatory to their skill levels. Period. If that means the NCAA tournament has to revenue share with men and women teams, and the NBA and WBA likewise, World Soccer, etc., in order to level the playing field compensation so that women can truly be called professional - if because of revenue differerences not completely equal, I've no problem with it. I am in awe of all athletes at the absolute pinnacle of their sport - regardless of their sex.
22
A reminder to all of the wildly off-topic commenters that think they are standing up for women: This discussion is not about whether women's sports are fun to watch or play. It is not about whether men can enjoy watching different levels of play in different contexts. It is not about whether pro women work hard or deserve respect. It is about whether women should somehow receive "equal pay" or something like it out of a sense of "fairness" in spite of the fact that women's soccer as a global sport is tiny with a shallow pool of competitors and miniscule income relative to the men's game. The value of the contract of one male global star is greater than all of the revenue generated by the US women in a year. This is not a taxpayer funded enterprise. The U.S. women collectively bargained for their compensation and will do so again. Let them get what the market will bear. The silly arguments made in this article and presented by many commenters are examples of liberal excess that makes me cringe. This arbitrary, identity-based approach to issues drives people to the right in droves. Right wing media outlets make a living spinning this kind of liberal extremism into a warning that all liberals are out for your rights and your money. The NYT provides them with many opportunities to do this.
8
Why should spectators be forced to watch women's basketball, soccer, and hockey because a handful of women want to be compensated for extending their athletic careers?
I oppose the professionalization of sport, with its emphasis on winning at all cost, and the grotesquely exorbitant salaries that attend it.
It is neither victory nor social progress if a select handful of female athletes start making salaries of 40 million per annum. This is grotesque by any measure in a truly egalitarian society.
Celebrate and reward achievement in other spheres of human life.
2
Pro sports are entertainment and if woman’s sports sold pay would be equal.
4
The best with watching women's football is that there is next to nothing of the faking that plague the men's game. It is a much more fair game and a pleasure to watch
Men and women are paid exactly the same in truly minor sports, nothing. All of we male fencers, rowers, etc, are still waiting for our checks from Patriarchal Conspiracy Inc.
The confusion and corruption of pure athletics with business will not be improved by more confusion. That's why we keep score with points, not dollars.
4
I have enjoyed watching the WWC in the past. However, with all the whining as of late...I’m finished.
4
I personally prefer women soccer to men’s. There is less of the fake injury nonsense.
While somewhat of a tangent let me offer advice to women sport organizations. Don’t change the game from the men’s game. Women successfully play basketball, soccer, ice hockey, skiing etc on the same terms as men. For some unknown reason to me, women’s lacrosse and baseball organizers decided to change the game. Women’s lacrosse and softball are basically unwatchable. Let ‘em play w men’s rules and equipment!!
1. Many women view women's soccer as inappropriate. Women shouldn't play team sports.
2. Compared to men, they aren't very good. Most a men's junior college teams would trounce the US Women's team. True fact: my son's under 16 boys' squad embarrassed the Arizona State University women's team 3 - 0 in a scrimmage twenty years ago. It wasn't as close as the score might indicate - they murdered them.
3. The women are slower and less aggressive than the men.
Compared to men they play the game on tiptoe.
Women's soccer will forever be a weak copy of the game played by men and no amount of cheerleading by the NY Times will change that fact.
6
What's the point of this piece? Should we watch the women's world cup? Sure. I have been. But there is no point in trying to equate it to the men's game.
3
In my entire life, I have never met a woman who passionately follows professional team sports. I am from the south, and women there follow things like Kentucky basketball and Alabama football, but usually it's a big social event or they have a connection to the school (alumni or family). But I've never met a woman who plays fantasy ball, gambles a lot on sports, buys lots of team gear, memorizes obscure team or player stats etc. Maybe the overall market for professional female team sports just isn't there, and blaming this fact on sexism and patriarchy won't change anything. Soccer is a minor sport in the US anyway, further limiting the appeal. The highest paid and most popular female athletes are all tennis players, so clearly a market exists for female athletes to excel and be recognized. But soccer is not the venue for it.
2
I am all for people doing whatever they like, but as a soccer player, i find the wearing of makeup by the players, say the U.S. women's team, odd. Just seems odd somehow.
3
This article is perfectly illustrative of how difficult it is to refute left wing thinking with respect to the problem of lack of representation of women or minorities at the highest levels in certain fields. According to left wing thinking either sexism, racism or lack of nurture, any reason really other than lack of native ability is responsible for why this or that group or sex is not performing at the very highest levels in certain fields.
Left wing thinking is so intractable with respect to this problem that the author, a philosopher no less, cannot understand that women's soccer is inherently less interesting than men's (and therefore women make less money at it) because it's not played at the very highest level humanly possible. Because we are talking about soccer here, sports, where everyone knows raw talent is the essential element, the author cannot have recourse to the usual left wing arguments of racism and sexism so she instead just tries to convince us by talk that women's soccer is soccer at the highest level and that women therefore just deserve the same attention as men at the game.
When we reflect that not even the most obvious proof of difference in native ability can sway left wing thinking, proof in the field of sports where raw talent for generations has been taken for a given, we can understand why so many other fields such as in the arts and sciences are plagued by confusion as to what constitutes excellence and how best we can get there.
9
The writer listed three things as necessary to a great sporting spectacle, but missed a fourth factor that is often just as important: the mental game of strategy and tactics. Knowledgeable fans of any sport, male or female, tend to place great importance on that aspect of the game, which often renders a sporting event satisfying for them when it may be unsatisfying for viewers with less knowledge of the game. Some of the dismissive comments the author makes about certain players or events make me wonder if she is in the latter category of less strategically aware fans (which would be ironic, given her professional qualification cited here is that of philosophy teacher).
As for remarks about things like long-ball, aerial soccer being a lesser-skilled version of the game, that shows ignorance of the fact that such a style evolved in countries with wetter weather, as the behavior of the ball on the ground was more unpredictable in those locales (again, an odd gap in the writer's awareness, given she's based in England).
I completely agree about enjoying women's sporting endeavors as much as men's, on TV, at the stadium or in the park. That's been my experience both as a player and spectator. But I found the writer's POV here superficial: lacking in awareness and understanding of what goes on in those various sports. So this op-ed did indeed seem more like opinionating than philosophizing, when a more informed and more deeply analytical piece could have been more persuasive.
3
Women are gifted athletes and fierce competitors. As mentioned, women athletes could best the majority of men.
However, male sports have a psychological dimension. Sports are proxies or metaphors for the expression of dominance, the imposition of will, and killing an opponent.
Sports mean different things to different sexes. A Las Vegas sports book takes scant wagers on women's sports. There's little volume because of much less interest.
I have never seen a fistfight break out in women's sports. Men - plenty. I have never heard of female professional athletes taking illegal psychotropic drugs as a pastime to prove their boldness. I have never heard of a female athlete engaging in serial extra-marital affairs. The males, very often they have groupies.
Male athletes are a horse of a different color.
The psychological archetype known as the Rooster pushes the ego with testosterone. Sports are metaphors for the Rooster's relationship with a system. Sports are socially acceptable ways of competing and fighting in a territory demarcated by simple rules, things you don't always find in real life. Sports are easy to comprehend, invite truculency, and provide a forum for infraction. Accordingly, the Rooster finds suitable media for expression in sports.
Women, in the main, don't have an urge to break rules, laws, and norms. And thank goodness for that. Otherwise we'd live in a near amoral society.
3
@Wordsworth from Wadsworth
This is an archaic, retrograde--even dangerous--point of view that reproduces the worst stereotypes of men in sports.
Amateur sports is nothing if not about camaraderie and discovering the importance of teamwork. Sports are often a vehicle through which communities cohere.
Remember Klaus Beer and Bob Beamon in Mexico City, 1968?
1
For the country in the world that constantly puts itself forward as the most "progressive" values and women's rights, we certainly have a very long way to go in this regard.
Reading the comments are quite depressing.
6
Everybody has the right to play soccer. Nobody has the right to be paid the same as another for playing soccer at a fundamentally different skill level as the other. Nobody has the right to have an audience watch her play soccer.
5
Someone should invent virtual-reality sporting events. Imagine 3D "players" duking it out right in front of you on a basketball court. Just think, there could be "stars" whose skills far surpass those of the best real players--think of the money! Imagine a life-sized virtual Super Bowl whose "players" wow the fans with their superior-to-human abilities. And imagine fans commenting about how boring it is by comparison to watch lower-performing actual human players !
Whichever sport generates the most TV revenue (and revenue in general) should be the sport where its players get paid the most. Makes sense for everyone, right?
9
This is really good for lots of reasons, including because it focuses on how great women's sport can be even as it acknowledges the very real physical differences between the sexes.
1
Supply and demand have already been amply mentioned, so here are a couple of additional observations:
- As a male who played NCAA Division I soccer, I'm under no illusions. There's little difference between male and female college soccer - neither one attracts big crowds or generates revenue for the university. We are all fully subsidized by the football (and in a few cases, basketball) program. There's no point crying about how we work just as hard, etc.
- In Europe, where the club and academy system was well developed at the advent of woman's soccer (many clubs were already over a hundred years old), the women entered a highly organized system (with first class facilities, trainers, physiotherapists, etc.) from day one, and the development of ladies teams has benefited. Thus, a little patience is in order as the ladies game gains in popularity. Note that Ada Hegerberg has not insisted that Lyon pay her as much as the male players - only her national team. And in any case, she is not the first soccer player to demand a ransom to play for the flag of her country - see Bernd Schuster, for example.
- Ironically, when it comes to clubs and endorsements, American women soccer players are among the best paid in the world, while American male players are among the worst paid. Thus the gap between them is the lowest in the world. National teams are a different kettle of fish - perhaps the woman should have their own organization outside of FIFA.
7
My daughters played several sports and the elder played club soccer for 10 years or so. I am a big fan of Women’s Soccer. frankly, it looks a lot more like the game I could play when I was younger than anything I see watching the English Prem, or MLS etc.
Having said that- it was a shame our WNT ran up the score 13 -0 on Thailand.
5
@Lefthalfbach
I agree. It was an ugly, hyperbolic display of poor sportsmanship, especially the gleeful celebrations after each goal.
The goal differential rule, invoked to decide among equal Won/Lost records, exacerbates this problem.
There needs to be a limit on goal differentials--perhaps ten--just as in children's fastball or softball.
This match also exemplifies the lack of depth in women's soccer as well as issues with the qualifying process.
This is an imbalance you rarely witness in men's soccer, in which the national team of a tiny country like Portugal (population, ten million) can defeat the giants of the sport.
Ryall's timing could not have been worse.
What was that about "uncertainty of outcome" and "crescendo of drama?"
This match was a farce.
2
@Lefthalfbach
I agree. That was shameful.
1
@Chance
My daughters played in tournaments where goal differential was like the 4th tiebreaker. However, the Max differential considered was 3.
1
Pay equity?
Let us know when the planet stops for the women's WC like it does for the men's. When millions of women wake up at 2AM to see the game live on TV because of time zone differences. When the viewership isn't millions, but billions. Yes, the men's WC is really that insane. When the sale of women's soccer jerseys and other apparel approaches 1/10th the level of the men's. When TV advertisers are paying the same rates to get you to buy stuff.
Let us know when the TV ratings for the WNBA approaches a fraction of the NBA numbers. When courtside seats go for thousands, the arenas are full, and none of the seats are exactly cheap.
Oh, and the women do get paid the same as the men at the tennis majors. That's despite playing best of 3 instead of best of 5. Which is why the classic men's matches that go to 5 sets are always more compelling than the women's 3rd set, and why no women's match will ever be as dramatic as the epic men's matchups that last 5 hours or more.
Money money money. Advertising revenue, and other ancillary revenue streams. Create that first, the paychecks will surely follow. Get back to us when I see as many folks, male or female, wearing LA Sparks jerseys as I do Laker jerseys in SoCal (despite not having to compete with another local franchise like the LA Clippers).
We'll wait . . . one day Godot will surely come.
18
Sorry, competitive high testosterone behavior is what most women find attractive in men, whereas most men do not find this attractive in women. This will not go away as much as your propaganda may try to make it go away.
The reason is biological propensities that differentiate what heterosexual human males and females find attractive, but these are not completely determined as social learning and early play related to hormonal exposure likely also play a role in shaping this behavior.
All early claims about genetic basis for sexual orientation and homosexuality have never been replicated.
Thus, if we value heterosexuality, we need to teach these masculine and feminine ideals and stop the feminist/self=contradictory propaganda that all traditional gender role behaviors are socially learned unless of course if it is related to heterosexual attraction - the most innate differentiator of males and females in all mammalian species.
8
I've often wondered why these men -- and they're always men -- believe that declaring that the best men's team will always beat the best women's team somehow clinches their sexist justifications for minimizing women's sports. I bet these guys would never claim men's college basketball doesn't deserve its enthusiastic audience (and financial support) even though any pro NBA team would easily beat UVa, the 2019 NCAA champions. No, of course they wouldn't. As the author says, it's about a match of skilled players, an uncertain outcome, and a crescendo of drama until the end. March Madness provides just that -- with collegians, not NBA pros -- and the Women's World Cup provides at least the same level of thrills -- with women, not men.
5
@Allan I've often wondered why the women who rush to excoriate men for not watching or promoting women's sports don't criticize other women for not doing so.
If women paid half as much attention to women's sports as they did to "Titanic" or " 50 Shades of Grey" or "Twilight", women's sports would be making its stars and even its journeywomen quite rich.
But even women feminists don't watch or attend women's sports. Empty seats don't lie.
7
@Allan - agreed. After all, why bother watching Usain Bolt? He'd never beat a half-decent horse.
/eyeroll
This article is ludicrous.Women are paid less because the leagues they play in bring in less revenue.
No one is denying that women’s sports can be entertaining at times, but the general idea that a potential consumer would want to watch and invest their entertainment time in a faction of the sport where the talent level and skills aren’t the best is absolutely ridiculous. In America there are plenty of competitive amateur sports such as minor league baseball and the NBA G league. In England there are 6 leagues under the elite Premier League. No one is complaining these amateurs aren’t paid enough because it’s obvious that consumers aren’t interested enough to raise enough revenue.
The argument that athletic women can triumph against unathletic men also proves nothing in regard to the point expressed above.
Before accusing all men of oppressing women we should look at some facts and evidence .
13
I fully support the idea of well-paid women’s soccer, but I’m too conditioned by the pace and intensity and theatricality of men’s soccer to enjoy watching the games. A measure of the difference is the recent defeat of the US women’s team by an under-15 boys’ club team in Texas https://www.cbssports.com/soccer/news/a-dallas-fc-under-15-boys-squad-beat-the-u-s-womens-national-team-in-a-scrimmage/
5
This article seems to confuse sport as physical competition and sport as entertainment. The money doesn't come from the contest, it comes from the fans. Are the fans as scintillated by watching a woman run a 10.7 second 100m as they are watching Usain Bolt run 35 feet ahead of that speed? No. When I was 15 I was running 100s faster than Jackie Joyner Kersey, the fastest woman ever. And I couldn't even get my parents to show up at a meet. Must every inequity be treated as an assault on certain identity groups? If so, maybe white men should complain about not getting to sprint in the Olympics. They only let black men in the finals.
14
@Vee.eh.en
White men can't jump (hurdles.)
Quick, someone tell Pep Guardiola that men's football is "dominated by the shortcut of long balls slapped diagonally down the field."
6
Ryall needs to understand that men support women's participation in sport and equal pay when warranted. Fathers mentor their daughters in throughout the sports spectrum.
But Ryall also needs to narrativize sporting history and achievement accurately, which she seems unable to do with her compendium of misrepresentations.
The truth of the matter is that competitive high school boys can outperform female Olympic athletes.
One example is Matthew Boling, whose national school boy record in the 100m is nearly half-a-second faster than Florence Griffith-Joyner's Olympic record.
It may be more profitable to examine women's sports that enjoy an equal footing or even greater celebrity than their men's counterparts.
Women's figure skating has long been considered to be the glamor event of the Winter Olympics, and gold medalists typically enjoy more lucrative endorsement income than their male counterparts.
Women's gymnastics--a sport that potentially damages the body and psyche--is also more popular than men's gymnastics. Men's gymnastics includes strength events like rings and parallel bars, while women's events include uneven bars and the balance beam, which requires a combination of athletic ability and balletic grace.
Sometimes, there is no point in comparing apples and oranges. The important thing is to enable the opportunity to participate at all levels of amateur sport.
Professional sports, with its exorbitant male salaries, is another matter altogether.
6
I assume people want to see a competitive game. When I was in high school our men's football and basketball teams did not win a single game. As our women's basketball team did well we saw more and more students and parents attend our games. We ended up our state champions. The city (albeit small) held a special parade and pep rally for us. Many, many people came out in support. At the end of the day sports participation, for men and women, is an awesome way to learn how to be on a team, exhibit leadership, and make friends.
Women are so much better athletes than when I was in high school and college. They should be rewarded appropriately- equally- for their efforts and success.
There is beauty and entertainment value in all sport. Male, female or mixed doubles, which can not be a PC term; and also in individual and team sports. Here is the real issue -
"Great sport requires only three things: excellence of skill, uncertainty of outcome, and a crescendo of drama that isn’t relinquished until the last second.
Maybe true for a sports purist of any ilke - but the critical fourth element is the audience / the fans of sport. Mostly male right now. Any entertainment or art is presented and then there is the interaction between viewer and art. In sport this is mostly men, wanting to look at men's or women's sports. The audience / entertainment / advertising dynamic will not change until there is a female sports audience that is willing to endure the same mindless ads we do. I'm not sure women are interested in sports entertainment for women's or men's teams. The audience and dollars drive the presented sport entertainment, and should.
13-0? Isn’t there a 6 goal limit? How classless to be be wildly celebrating goals against a team who shouldn’t be in the tournament. Wake me up for the finals.
4
@Jtc Yeah, that was bad form. If you mist keep scoring, at least cut the celebrations out.
1
Let the free market dictate what’s exciting and worth of high and ridiculous salaries for athletes. And leave the wishful thinking and political correctness out of it.............
3
Can someone explain to me how this article integrates with other pieces that support transgender sports players? I don't think allowing biologic men to compete in women's sports is fair to either sex. The paragraph below spells it out well:
"The physiological differences between the sexes also aren’t the entire ballgame, so to speak. Advocates of women’s sport rightly argue that they are impressive precisely because of women’s relative lack of upper body strength: If you’re unable to muscle your way to victory, you have to think of alternative ways to get there."
1
All sports should be coed.
Why can't football/soccer be played with teams that are half women and half men, with man and women in goal for each half.
Swimming and track, mixed relays and mixed teams with lowest combined time. Field events - furthest combined distance.
Basketball 6 on 6, widen the court a tad.
Stop the segregation.
1
"the top female soccer players would run rings around many male sides"
Ummm... not even close to true. The FC Dallas under-15 boys squad beat the U.S. Women's National Team in a scrimmage in 2017.
Young teenage boys soundly defeated the world's best professional soccer team. If you can't be bothered to check your facts, why should we take this editorial seriously.
10
The allure for many sports fans is watching the best in the world do their thing. No matter the sport. No matter the gender. We like watching athletes do what we cannot.
When it comes to women's sports, you are not watching the best. Virtually all the time, you are watching women play at a competitive level equal to high school or, maybe, maybe small college men.
If WNBA players, or, women's World Cup soccer players want to make as much money as their male counterparts, let them try to play on an NBA team or men's soccer teams.
I like strolling over to the park to watch little league baseball games or beer league softball. But I am not willing to pay $200 a ticket to do that.
5
This NYT slant is getting fatiguing. One thing determines relative sports salaries — revenue. And all pro sports compete for it. If TV and attendance revenue is equal between mens and womens soccer, then pay will equalize. If the women’s sport generates less revenue, they will be paid less.
14
Supporting a reasonable conclusion with unreasonable arguments convinces no one. Here are some examples.
1) Failing to acknowledge that many women's sports are less competitive. In women's sports the top teams are very good, but there is real parity beyond that. For instance, the US women won 13-0 today. If you watch the NCAA women's basketball tournament you'll see similar. This can make women's sports less enjoyable. In most games there simply isn't "an uncertainty of outcome" or "a crescendo of drama". Perhaps there is later on in tournaments, but people won't care about those games as much if they didn't care about the earlier ones. The author even seems to recognize this later in the piece.
2) To suggest that Djokovic has significantly less finesse than Osaka is misleading. Djokovic is surely more powerful, but he cannot rely solely upon this because the men he is competing against are similarly powerful.
3) The author takes the fact that women athletes are better than ordinary men to be significant. Sure it's true, but it doesn't make women's sports more interesting.
And now to counter a fallacious argument preponderating in the comments, the fact that an under 15 team beat the US Women's national team doesn't mean that much. Sure, the boys were better in the sense that they won, but were they more skilled? Doubtful. We don't not watch men's sprinting because horses are faster and similarly we shouldn't not watch women's sports because men are stronger and faster.
4
@EL
The great thing about athletic contests is that, absent some cheating or other chicanery, the better team wins. So, were the boys more skillful? They won, and that is the measure. They count goals, not style points.
As the coach says, in sports, you are as good as your record says you are.
2
@Sailor Sam
Being strong or tall is not a skill. Skill is something that must be learned. The exercise of skill is an exercise of intelligence. We enjoy athletic events because they are a demonstration of skill--if we were interested in just pure ability, we would watch horses.
1
FIFA World Cup is a business--not a social justice exercise. The most recent men's Cup had 5 times the viewership of the last women's Cup. If you don't like the disparity in prize money, then you could always sue FIFA to integrate the competition--with the best women's teams competing against the best men's teams. Would that disaster stop this kind of farcical attempt to substantiate the gender pay gap? Of course not.
9
Speaking of inequality, today the US women's soccer team beat Thailand 13-0. Paid professional futballers versus amateurs who work day jobs and only play for the love of the game. Isn't that UNFAIR?
BTW - that kind of atrocious (and boring) scoreline just doesn't happen in men's WC soccer.
5
@Marc D
And not only that, but the average Thai works 6 day workweeks 10 hours a day.
It’s not a male club? The men play better and are more exciting to watch. The 13-0 rout of Thailand by the USA shows what a joke women’s soccer is. It’s a total bore, but the politics of it and the propaganda continue.
6
@Edward
I bet you've never watched any USWNT games.
Many people decry men's soccer for the lack of scoring. "It's boring, not enough scoring" is a common criticism. The women bank 13 goals, and people criticize them for scoring too many goals.
You, like so many people, are biased against women.
Well, I never understood why someone should expect equal pay for a subpar product whatever sport. John McEnroe got hammered when he pointed out that Serena Williams is not the best tennis player. She's only the best womens player. So if she can't play as well as a man or even as well as most top men in college, why should there be an expectation of equal pay... and that's not to even bring up the point that women tennis players only work one fith as much as men in the grand slam events.
If you want to get down this road of equal pay for not the same performance, then every player regardless of ability should be paid the same.
5
The misogyny of these comments is shocking.
6
Really? Why?
1
@Mary
Pointing out facts does not equate misogyny.
This line of attack from PC types when bereft of a logical comeback is all too common and nonsensical.
1
I imagine that the money for athlete compensation and travel amenities comes directly from the fans - and this depends on the number of fans, how much they are willing to pay for a ticket, and how much they spend on ancillary merchandise related to the team. If fans aren't spending as much money on women's sport - regardless of reason - then the cash just literally is not there to pass on to the athletes.
On the other hand, if women athletes are bringing in as much revenue as their male counterparts, but this revenue-generation is not reflected in their compensation, then that's an injustice for sure.
5
Not precisely true; wishful thinking. In so far as professional sports goes it’s all about who can generate revenue, which is why, for examples, the women’s PGA and WNBA and the men’s lacrosse league all barely hang on. Good sport? Maybe. A career? Something else. And sex does play a role: women golfers can’t bomb the ball 300 yards or hit two shots to reach a 500 yard green. It matters to spectators.
1
@Kent Kraus
You are a little behind the times. The LPGA is doing fine now because of the internationalization of the sport. But prize money does lag far behind women's tennis, partly because of the minginess of the sponsors.
Many women can hit their tee shots almost 300 yards--it depends on the condition of the fairways. And reaching 500-yard par fives is not uncommon these days. 550-yard par fives is more of a challenge.
Entertainment is not only about brute power and raw distance. In golf, it also includes finesse and the quality of the competition.
Unfortunately, men enjoy a significant edge in finesse and depth of field. US Women's Opens are noteworthy for the relative speed and difficulty of the greens, which many women golfers cannot effectively negotiate. It is putting ability, more than raw distance, that distinguishes the superior male golfers.
1
I can hardly stand to read all the comments alleging that men are superior to women in this regard. This is not about that, it is about equal pay for playing the same game professionally. And speaking only for myself, I watch women's sports exclusively because (a) I am tired of all the thugs who play men's sports, beating their wives and committing other crimes and (b) I absolutely love to see women achieving at these high levels, knowing how hard they worked, against all the odds and against all these sexist pigs who don't even think women should play sports. Go women!! I laud you and your effort, skill, and talents!! Men if you don't feel that way then don't watch. But you should not hold all the cards here even though for some reason you think you do and that this is all up to you. Step off, men.
6
@Carla
Equal pay for playing the same game?
Then eliminate men’s and women’s teams and have both sexes compete equally for the same roster spots on a uni-sex team.
9
@Carla
If anyone alleged a superiority of a particular sex, it's the writer of the article in favor of women and who denigrated men's sports as a an exercise is "brute power" vs women's sports being all "finesse" and "skill".
Read the article again, maybe the preposterousness of it will sink in second time around.
1
@Carla
Men don't watch.
Women don't watch either.
Perhaps check with the Sisterhood as to why they don't pack stadiums to watch women's sports.
1
At the lavish FIFA conferences, an all boys club if ever there was one, all the power and kudos lies with having a strong men's team. Hence even in the countries such as the US and Australia where the women appreciably out perform the men a large majority of the money still goes to the men's game.
1
What is missing in your "things" is viewers. Americans love women's soccer in big international settings like the World Cup or Olympics. But not every week and Americans don't watch that much men's soccer either.
5
The USWNT did a disservice to women's soccer in their 13-0 rout of hapless Thailand. Why? you ask. Because the level of competition in that game was akin to an AYSO game where one team was stacked to compete in the post season.
2
@Fmblog
Is that the USWNT's fault??? No.
Is that the fault of the world for not supporting the training and development of girl's soccer. Yes.
In one sense this is such an old debate, and has been at least once resolved in a civilized way.
Plato, The Republic, Book V, ~ 380 BCE:
"Socrates: Then, if women are to have the same duties as men, they must have the same nurture and education?
Glaucon: Yes.
Socrates: The education which was assigned to the men was music and gymnastic.
Glaucon: Yes.
Socrates: Then women must be taught music and gymnastic and also the art of war, which they must practice like the men?
Glaucon: That is the inference, I suppose."
But then as now, Plato understood there would be those who have trouble with the basic idea of equality:
"
Socrates: But then, I said, as we have determined to speak our minds, we must not fear the jests of the wits which will be directed against this sort of innovation; how they will talk of women's attainments both in music and gymnastic and above all about their wearing armor and riding upon horseback!
Glaucon: Very true."
We in some senses are just catching up with classical ideals here, in general. Approximately 2500 years onward, we still are trying to get back to the ancients.
2
Not much uncertainty of outcome today.
1
Why is a zero-sum game in these articles? Cannot women's and men's sports be popular? After all, there are many sports that are popular with differing fan bases such as basketball versus baseball fans. There's no secret room where men (no doubt white) are plotting to keep women's sports away from the public and god knows, there are legion of promoters trying to make a buck off any ball that moves. If there is no NFL or MBL for women, it's simply there is no audience.
4
"I prefer watching Naomi Osaka’s finesse to Novak Djokovic’s more brute power." Okay. Wow. Time to mansplain. Osaka is much more of an aggressive player who likes to stand on top of of the baseline and dominate with her power. Djokovic is a nemesis of the greatest attacking player ever, Roger Federer, because of his adaptive, indefatigable defense. To compare just one stat: Osaka is 3rd in aces on the WTA whereas Djokovic is 48th on the ATP in that same stat. Further, you mention the 2003 Roland Garros semi between Henin and Serena, and compare it to Fedal's matches at the same venue. Yet that match was the greatest of their rivalry whereas none of Roger and Rafa's greatest matches have occurred on that court. You say the super bowl was terrible when in reality it was a defensive masterpiece that was only bad for highlight shows and very casual viewers. You mention Messi and Curry's feminine grace but the reality is that Messi has more lower body strength packed into his 5'6" frame that any women physiologically possibly could and Curry is beloved in part for hitting a number of three pointers well beyond the capability of women basketball stars. That women in sport are still mistreated and that women's sports are eminently watchable is true on face, so the need for the false and ridiculous comparisons to and examples from men's sports is lost to me. Also hooliganism in football is nothing like it was 20 years ago. Perhaps do some research and don't cherry pick.
14
If women's sporting events were fun to watch, you wouldn't have to write a column about them; people would just watch them. Some sports are fun to watch, and others are not. No need to insert identity politics into sports.
17
It's funny how for years it was said that only men could properly read the news on TV, play guitar, design a building that would stand up properly, do math, paint pictures, be full professors, etc., etc. It's mind-boggling to think how much was lost over the years by denying chances to half of the population to express their talents and abilities. It shouldn't take so long and so much effort to get this to happen in sports. However, the whole combination of advertising, sports management and corruption in FIFA is a big problem for women's soccer.
4
If I follow the conclusion of this article US Men U20 (under 20) Soccer Team should be paid the same as the top team. They play the same sports, they're at the top of their category, they represent their country, they get the same pay. Same for juniors.
And while we're at it, all US athletes should be paid the same, why discriminate among sports ?
12
Reading these comments it's apparent that there are still many people who are very resistant to looking at the common humanity men and women both share regarding physical achievement to which sex is irrelevant. There seems to be a lot of investment in making sure we all focus on the differences--despite the cogent argument in this op-ed that male and female professional athletes have more in common with each other than either do with the couch potatoes of either sex who watch them play. The resistance to female sports has always come from insecure men who need male sports heroes in order to vicariously feel superior to all women.
8
@Amy Luna Because it has NOTHING... ahem.... to do with the FACT that male athletes preform at higher levels and those watching sports want to see their athletes preform at the HIGEST levels.....
3
@Amy Luna
It did not take long for the predictable charge of male insecurity and defensiveness to make its way into this Comments field.
You make a lot of unwarranted assumptions. Many spectators are not couch potatoes, but excellent professional and amateur athletes who appreciate superior athleticism on the part of both women and men. And yes, the majority of these spectators tend to be men because they enjoy sports more than women.
Most men in my acquaintance support women's participation and fair compensation in sport. Equality is another issue because outcomes are not guaranteed.
Yours is the kind of presumptuous observation that exacerbates the gender divide introduced in Ryall's article.
Not what we need during Trump's reign.
2
Yet another article on gender in sports? If it generates clicks, and thus supports the NYT through advertising, great. Otherwise, could we chill just a bit?
3
Would you still be writing this article if the entire women's soccer team wasn't so beautiful? If they were all fat and ugly like me no would be coming to their defense and newspapers certainly wouldn't care anything about them. No one would be saying they need more money.
The author has left out two important components that make athletics entertaining - incredible athletic talent and intense competitiveness.
And males have more of both.
The author admits that men have more innate athletic talent to display than women in almost every single type sporting endeavor. Because men are bigger, stronger, faster, have quicker reflexes, can jump higher, etc., male sports include more -and more sensational - jaw dropping events. Compare a typical highlight reel LeBron James dunk to the WNBA's first by Lisa Leslie. Sorry - no comparison.
Second, men are more competitive, aggressive and domineering by nature. In zero sum sports games, entertainment value is a function of the degree to which each side will do almost anything to win, and the higher the stakes the better. All psychological measures of sex differences consistently find that males are more competitive than females, and this creates more intense sporting "competitions".
I am not claiming that female athletic games are not entertaining. They are. But Ryall is making an apples to oranges comparison.
ps - The WNBA has been a financial loser from it's inception
-on average over 10 million a year. How does it survive? Free tickets to games and ongoing subsidies of millions per year thanks to the men's NBA revenue.
8
Masculine sports are definitely dominant. After all, men invented sports for pretend war. Except when it comes to European football where the American female team does very well, winning two World Cup if I recall well. And feminine tennis ain' t bad either.
1
Simple solution.
Pool all the prize money and split it equally between male and female winners. Everyone will then be more or less equally miserable with their lot in their sporting life.
1
Can't the point be made without resorting to denigrating men? Heck, much of this article is predicated on women being "allowed" to act like men.
6
A group of 15 year old boys from Dallas,TX beat the US women's team 5-2.
FYI.
11
Let’s settle this and have the US Men play the US Women in NY or LA on TV for big bucks and a national audience. The battle of the sexes.
Time to just Do It!
2
A few years ago, roughly up until 2017, the newspaper that stood for obsessive-compulsive social justice hysteria was the Guardian. It was there that you could find diatribes against (1) men, (2) whites, and (3) straight people. Now, for some reason the most mainstream newspaper in this country has taken up the torch. If this continues, I will cancel my subscription. There's no news here anymore -- just the agenda to hurt, vilify, and slander men, whites, and heterosexuals as often and loudly as possible.
12
@Eugene I wish I could give your comment a hundred likes.
5
@Eugene This is so true. I've been contemplating cancelling for a while now. I think there are a lot of us getting tired of this. I payed for good journalism, digging into the details to find the truth. Not for this constant agenda pushing.
2
@Eugene to be fair this is in the editorial section.
if everytime I read a women's soccer story it goes off an discrimination bender count me out.
12
“Because of this, women’s sport is often more interesting. I prefer watching Naomi Osaka’s finesse to Novak Djokovic’s more brute power. “
Now I know this guy has never watched either of those players. Djokovic is a master tactician and GOAT defender that’s not a power player, while Ms Osaka is a “big babe tennis” practitioner whom is all power and little fitness.
9
It requires a fourth thing : Money -= # of eyeballs
1
Just one little NYT detail. If you open up the Sports page and click on Soccer there is a results/scoreboard tab. If you look at the menu it has World Cup/ EPL/La Liga etc. If you click on World Cup you see the results of the 2018 MENs World Cup. There is nothing about the World Cup that is happening right now. What is up NYT Editors?
Are men really faster and stronger than women?
Faster, yes, unless you are counting reflexes. Has anybody measured these?
Stronger? Yes, if you are counting relatively short bursts and not endurance. Unfortunately, the sports where women are equal or superior to men are not spectator sports. Women compete on an equal level with men for ultra-marathon running and long distance swimming. Triple-cross the English Channel? Four people have done it, two men, two women.
Competitive attitude, which just might be linked to testosterone can enter into this. And being too competitive could be dangerous.
Not hard to imagine other sports where women and men might be evenly matched, but hard to imagine who would participate and who would pay to watch:
Weightlifters: Who can press the greatest weight over 24 hours? Men will start with far heavier lifts, but for how long can they keep going?
Dan Kravitz
3
@Dan Kravitz
There are no women who are even in the same universe when it comes to the strongest man in the world, Hafthor Bjornsson. His capacities are far beyond most men and all women. And that is also true of the men who compete against him. Women can't do what they do. The bone and muscle structure are different. Go to an NFL combine or training camp and tell me that men have lower muscle endurance than women do.
Men, on average are far stronger and faster than women. At elite levels, it's not even close. This is meaningless except when feminists try to deny biology.
2
The US will always win women's soccer matches because the rest of the world just humanizes it - it is a nasty, physically challenging event that is too much for a woman. Could be compared with Female tennis compared with Men's tennis (women only play the best of 3 sets while men the best of 5, women's finals always on a Saturday and Men's always on a Sunday).
For starters, reduce the play time for women, say 2 times 35 minutes rather than 2 times 45.
Please stop complaining and whining and arguing. It's making me stop even caring one bit about Women's soccer. Because I'm getting sick and tired off the whining.
Just keep working on your product. Maybe it'll gain traction not because of speed and momentum (which arguably is superior in Men's soccer) but something else.
But the whining is giving me a sour taste and frankly I had enough already. Would you be rather drawn into a store at a street mall by some interesting 'thing' or by the shop owner yelling at you how unfair you are not coming to their store?
9
Generally the competitive nature and popularity of some sports do not justify equal pay. If you are the best of 5,000 watched by 20,000 is not the same as being the best of 100,000 watched by millions. The later, cases like women’s tennis seems well justified. While Women’s soccer is growing in leaps. It is good game for women, with less need for what my daughter might term toxic masculinity! And women cheat far less than the disgraceful men’s soccer. So yes pay them more... men’s soccer, horrible game full of professional cheats. Pay them less.
Disgraceful exhibit of sportswomanship. What was the coach thinking letting players score this many goals? This is like the US bombing Libya or some other weakling and being proud of it. I've played soccer 55 of my 66 years and never witnessed anything like this. Quite frankly, although I enjoy watching women play soccer as my wife and daughter did in and after college, there is no comparison in the skill or excitement between women's and men's games. And therefore there should not be parity in salaries until women's sports can attract even 50% of men's fans at games. This game turned me completely off the US women's team. Ladies, pick on someone your own capabilities and then we can consider you worthy of any raise.
4
Eden Hazard just got transferred from Chelsea (London) to Real Madrid for $112million.
There's serious money in the men's game that is not generated by their female counterparts.
3
Top professional female athletes are usually on par with high school boys, sometimes junior varsity. They should consider themselves extremely lucky for making money at what many much more talented men couldn't.
I've seen the pink pass in my own career field, and it disgusts me. I went to school with a young lady who got to take twice as long on tests as everyone else because she claimed disability (ADHD or something), and now she's working at a premiere company in my industry. She didn't even have a stellar GPA despite the massive advantage she was given.
This nonsense has got to stop.
10
I'll give women's gymnastics an equal quality rating with men's. And beach volleyball? Now, the women's version is pretty, um, interesting. Interesting that they play in bikinis. Don't think they can beat the mean at the sport, but the visuals are much more interesting.
2
...says no one who has ever watched women's basketball or softball.
3
So much obvious "reaching" in the author's multiple arguments for; well for what exactly? Is she telling us that women's sports are better than men's, that women should get paid what men get paid, that women aren't as good but they would be if the patriarchy wasn't oppressing them? This fits the template for a Times editorial about women's sports, but is this article worthy of inclusion in one of the world's preeminent newspapers?
3
This is a ridiculously transphobic column, and it virtually erases the amazing contributions that trans women are on the brink of making to the world of sport.
In short, the idea of two binary sexes is wrong, unscientific, and utterly hateful.
And the fact is that Trans-Women are faster, stronger, and better athletes than many cishet females. Trans-Women have already broken several records in track and other sports, and until we acknowledge that there is no such a thing as biological sex, the better and more interesting our athletic competitions will be.
Just think of it - pretty soon we’ll be able to enjoy all of the speed, strength and ferocity of traditional male dominated sports, but on fields that are truly inclusive, gender-non-binary, and even a little bit mysterious and scintillating for those who aren’t into putting people in neat little boxes.
The future is Trans! This column is the past.
2
@Cane A true masterpiece of satire, a succinct indictment of the intellectual degeneration of the far left, and very funny as well. I say bravo to you, sir. Or madam.
3
@Cane if this is satire, it's good!
1
@Cane
I am howling so hard I can barely type.
If you don’t recognize the exponentially-higher level of competition the men’s team is up against compared to the women then you’re not paying attention.
6
Ryall’s piece, full of misrepresentation, seems designed to foment more acrimonious “mansplaining” and attendant accusations of male defensiveness.
The importance of both equal opportunity and the differences between men’s and women’s sports needs to be acknowledged.
Amateur sports, designed to promote physical and psychological development, differ vastly from professional sports with its emphasis on revenue. NCAA men’s basketball and football, however, complicate the distinction.
Nature has designed women to bear and wean children (estrogen, hips, breasts), which hinders them from performing at the same level as men in sports that require bursts of speed and jumping.
Federer is the definition of finesse, while Osaka is known for her brute forehand. Serena neglects to mention that women receive the same Slam prize money as men even though their matches are best two-out-of-three. Anyone remember Steffi bageling her way to one Slam victory after another, especially after Monica was decommissioned?
Curry and Messi do not exhibit “feminine-like grace” but superior agility and coordination.
US versus China in Pasadena was noteworthy because Briana Scurry was not called for illegally moving before a penalty kick.
“Excellence of skill, uncertainty of outcome, and a crescendo of drama” indeed define athletic entertainment value. March Madness defines these qualities.
I would pay to watch Yuna Kim skate and women golfers like In Gee Chun, Minjee Lee, and Lexi Thompson.
5
It’s going to take a few years, but eventually all FIFA money will be pooled and divided evenly between men and women, all NBA money will be pooled and divided evenly between men and women athletes, and all NFL money will be pooled and divided evenly between men players and cheerleaders.
2
Sincere thanks for the good laugh. Why did so many of the other men commenters go so nuts about this observational column about sports?
Like so many other things, women excel while men get the credit. It is time for that to change!
This argument infuriates me and it has nothing to do with the sexes and everything to do with this notion of equality run amuck. She states the top sprinter could out run a normal guy at a bar. Of course she can! She's a world class athlete same with a elite female player vs. the average division II or III college player. However, this is where it ends. There is no way a female athletes can compete with men in any professional level sport save billiards, fishing and perhaps bowling. It's not sexist it's the truth. Everyone was geeked about female golfers playing in the PGA. The top female golfer, the very best would be a low-tier player, because the courses are significantly longer and the rough is significantly higher it's a very different game. So let's settle this stupid argument that somehow female athletes can compete at the same level. Equally as stupid is comparing Herb from the local pub to a world class female athlete.
I remember when the WBNA complained about pay and David Stern simply said well, we can shut it down or you can play for what you make? The reason? Nobody watches the WNBA. If women want greater pay they need a bigger market.
All of this being said, if women's world cup pulls the same ratings as the men's pay them the same. Similar for any sporting event. If women's French open get's as good ratings pay them the same. If it rates higher, pay them more then men. It should be about the market outcomes of the events not the sex of the participant.
3
Wouldn't Marta be a maestra, not a maestro?
This might stop being an issue when trans women start moving into soccer.
1
The insecurity is showing. 3 articles on the World Cup all stating things against men (you dont need to be a man! Female soccer should get paid the same!) is growing tiresome.
The womans team is great. Everyone knows. Still, myself and many others will just watch the NBA finals.
Imagine if a headline had being a basketball player is easy and you don't have to be a woman. This comment section would melt.
3
"The top female soccer players would run rings around many male sides; and so on"
Are you delusional? You mean the best womens team that lost 5-2 to a FC Dallas' U15 team full of 14-year-olds would "...run rings..." around professional men teams. No, sorry, but just no. Hate to break it to you but disparity gap is way bigger than you let on... and makes you lose credibility.
7
Men's and women's football are different games. There is excellence to be had in each. It's been great to see the women's game evolve in our lifetime, largely due to the USA dragging up the rest of the world by providing the schools and a league. Now the schools and leagues are growing worldwide. It's part of the Smash the Patriarchy thing. In our lifetime!
2
When I think of Soccer in the US I think of the Women's Team. Do we have a Men's team? I can even name a famous Soccer Player: Brandy Chastain. And wasn't there that fierce Goalie named Hope? I cannot name a single US men's player.
1
It is true that elite male athletes are bigger, stronger, and faster than their female counterparts. But that size, speed, and strength now overwhelms the playing spaces. Soccer pitches, basketball courts, baseball diamonds, tennis courts - all unchanged since the early days of each sport - have become too small for the men's games. Thus we see the women's games becoming more interesting as skill and finesse and sheer hustle more than compensate for the supposed qualitative deficiencies.
2
@Andrew Dashiell
skill and finesse ...
Ah, Messi. Yup.
The men are out in full force! I'm guessing you are all world class athletes, imbued with preternatural skill and stamina of the gods, and that you are doing your duty to explain that while it's cute that little ladies dabble in sport, the highest level of sports are played by MEN. What none of you guardians-of-honor have addressed are the vast differences in training programs and funding, and the novice to player to elite to professional pipelines.
What I consistently find to be true is that professional spectators or mediocre former players, will argue until they are blue in the face, at just how good men are versus women of the same sport. These men are rarely trainers or physiologists or coaches. These are not men who understand pushing past, or adapting to, their physical limitations at the elite or professional level. Those gifted athletes understand the smallest taste of what it takes a female body to achieve the same outcome (ball in net, etc). Their espect is real.
To be clear: female sprinters at the collegiate level aren't just beating any schmoe off the line, they are running NFL Combine speeds. So for those so quick to assign professional women Farm League status, look harder at the brute strength, skill, and tactical brilliance of these women, and appreciate greatness. Encourage your sons, brothers, parters, and daughters to appreciate it too. Look and see what you've been missing!
3
@TLee
Why aren't these top collegiate female sprinters playing in the NFL if they are running times akin to the top collegiate male sprinters/NFL combine times?
1
Has nothing to do with "the Boy's Club". Women sports are second-tier competition by comparison, even with all the "women’s sport can be just as heart-stopping as the very best men can offer". Money and fan-time always goes to the top tier -- the nature of athletic competition.
If the interest is in watching women play sports just for the unique action of women being on the field, then that's a different issue and doesn't mean they shouldn't be paid as well as they earn. But Grand Collective gender-irrelevant enforcement is not the answer.
The answer lies in persuading the public to buy the tickets and watch at the same level as they do men's pro-sports and that can't be done with political fiat, shame, or guilt.
8
I covered high school sports for a small newspaper once. The girls soccer games were considerably more enjoyable to watch.
They would play the game as it was meant to played - passing the ball back and forth to each other and setting up plays. The boys, on the other hand, would mostly boot the ball to the other end of the field and chase after it, substituting athleticism for skill.
If you can put aside whatever bias you might have against female sports, I think you’ll find that they are just as enjoyable to watch, if not more so, as male sports.
The Women’s World Cup is a great example.
5
@Jeremy Bowman
The Women's World Cup usually proceeds with lopsided victories by established--Western--soccer powers over significantly less able teams. The matches get a bit more competitive by the semis and finals, which is usually a contest among the US, Norway, Brazil, France, and Canada.
While speed and power make the NBA and NFL more entertaining, it can detract from sports like men's volleyball and soccer where the rallies are too brief or the passes too long. Women's volleyball and soccer can be more entertaining in the same way that children's sports entertain.
But the relative lack of speed and power in the WNBA is what makes it unentertaining.
2
In the 1st century a proud father, Hermesianax of Corinth, raised a statue to Apollo in honour of his three outstanding athletic daughters: Tryphosa, who won sprints at the Pythian and Isthmian games; Hedea, who won a chariot race and a race in armour at the Isthmian Games, a sprint at the Nemean Games and a lyre competition in Athens; and Dionysia, who won the sprint at the Asclepius Games at Epidaurus. It seems the amazing Williams sisters are part of a very long tradition and that long-suffering dads have been traipsing around taking their brilliant daughters to track meets for a long time, too — and that we’ve always been happy to bask in the reflected glory.
@Stephen Hume
The amazing William sisters were trashed by an unseeded male player some years ago. You just need to google it.
Ms. Ryall: I couldn't agree with you more that "great sport requires only three things: excellence of skill, uncertainty of outcome, and a crescendo of drama that isn’t relinquished until the last second." That's why I am starting a movement to have little league baseball and wheelchair basketball added as sports to the olympics.
/s
6
Growing up in the UK in the 60’s and 70’s, we girls were relegated to playing netball—like basketball, except that you had to stand still with the ball, couldn’t run or move with it at all, could only stand and pass it to someone else. It was seen as a ladylike game. I remember we desperately wanted to play football (soccer, you would say), desperately wanted to play a game that would allow us to run and leap and do headers—and generally work off our energy. I remember clearly the male PE teacher telling us, with a smirk mixed with disgust at our request, that only boys could play football. I remember, as a child, puzzling for years about what it was about my female body that would prevent me from playing. (Similarly, i remember being 17 and seeing a beautiful jaguar sports car in a showroom, admiring it, and being told by the male salesman that only a man could handle a car like that. I spent a few years wondering what I didn’t have that a man had that meant I wouldn’t be able to drive such a car.) I was in my late 20s before it began to occur to me that there was nothing actually inferior or inadequate about me and that I was simply dealing with male-insecurity-fueled sexism.
7
As soon as money enters sports, then sports transgresses from an aesthetic/ athletic / amateur endeavor to commoditized physical exertion as entertainment. As it garners the attention of competitive entertainment, the promoters may prosper and the entertainers rightfully feel entitled too. That is fair perhaps — to the victors go the spoils ? It is not any longer sport per se.
2
This piece touch on it, but didn't dwell so I will expand on it. I think some sports the women version is better, some the men's are better, some it doesn't matter. in my opinion here are few (there are lots more):
Women:
Tennis
Volleyball
Figure skating
Gymnastics
Men:
Basketball
Soccer
Baseball
Hockey
Heavy weight fighting sports
Both:
Welterweight fighting sports
Golf
Track and field
Swimming
Skiing/snowboarding
climbing
1
Both - LACROSSE. The women’s game has actual rules and facets that are superior to the men’s version. It is a beautiful combination of speed, agility and awareness. Whereas the men’s game is amazing too with the full contact brought in.
1
Well, there’ll never be agreement on such a subjective issue, but I would say that in my opinion women’s hockey at the elite level is a much superior entertainment than the men’s game, at least as the NHL plays it. Unless you prefer all the grabbing, late and dangerous hitting, general goonery, blindside checks and delayed play for fisticuffs that usually devolve either to an incompetent dance by performing bears or back alley thuggery. Are there skilled NHLers? Of course. Do we get to see their dazzling skills? Not so much. They’re usually tin recovery from concussions delivered by guys you wouldn’t pay a nickel to see otherwise.
1
Yes, those three things matter, but its also much more about one other thing--MONEY. When women's professional sports consistently draw the same size crowds, viewership, fan loyalty and merchandising revenues, then women athletes will be rewarded at the same level as men. It's really that simple. Until then, the status quo is going to remain. No one is saying women don't play a good or entertaining game or that women's soccer, basketball, golf or tennis isn't worth watching, it surely is, but the truth of the matter is that the best players in the world in these sports are men and more people are going to pay to watch the best in the world. It's just the way it is.
7
@Cazanoma
It's obvious that the sexes have a different view about what constitutes entertaining sports play. SO, LADIES, you are going to have to really support women's sports at the level that men do with men's sports, in order to produce the resources these females players need to stay in the game.
@Susan
Actually your problem is that the sexes _don't_ have a different view about what constitutes entertaining play. 9 out of 10 men and women agree; women's sports are boring.
I agree with your proposed solution. But that's not going to happen. Women do not have the engagement with sports and competition than men do. And they never will.
1
Our colleges and universities lose $20 billion every year on intercollegiate athletics. They should stop that and focus instead on academics and on intramural sports played by all their students. They should abandon the NCAA.
6
"the men in gray suits, who still run all sports" are simply reacting to the realities of the market place.
If that is a "debacle of women's mistreatment" then perhaps the criticism should be directed at audiences who are willing to pay more to see some sports than others.
Of course the other possibility is that the "debacle of women's mistreatment" is caused by women mis-pricing their product!
5
"Great sport requires only three things: excellence of skill, uncertainty of outcome, and a crescendo of drama that isn’t relinquished until the last second."
Does that mean today 's result against Thailand was unsportsmanlike?
3
As a life long soccer fan, all I can say is YES
Women are equal in every way to men, and more so in many ways
1
@Chicago Paul rrrrrrrhhhheeeeallllyyyy..... Men still hold the upper hand in workplace deaths, suicides, and shorter life expectancy..... but Im sure the ladies out there aren't interested in equality on those ones....
2
Unfortunately that's just not true, hate to break it to you.
3
As an adult male and long time fan of women's and men's sports - I personally and semi-regularly attend women's sports in our college town and watched Germany v China in the women's world cup on TV last Saturday morning - I find it objectionable that many advocates for women's sports like the writer, are measuring the financial rewards against men, as if these were like people in an office doing the same work. Well maybe in one sense, but more importantly, sports as something other than amateur fun or semi-amateur collegiate competition is a business. The money follows from selling tickets, shoes, posters, etc. Sad to say - and I was truly upset about this watching it on TV this weekend - the women's world cup seems poorly attended with more empty seats than full, and tickets on Stub-Hub for not much more than going to the movies. This would be highly unlikely for the men's world cup, and is the true justification for the differing pay levels. Unequal promotion is alleged as part of the cause, but you can't create from whole cloth the kind of devotion the world holds towards men's soccer - this isn't new Coke and it will take time and something else to make the best players on Serena William's level of popularity and financial success, which by the way, probably rivals the men tennis players. That wasn't by fiat or design, but the market.
4
My ten year old son and I are watching the women's World Cup. We enjoy it. It is not the same game as the men's game. The author is right. Part of the game is much nicer to enjoy. The passing is tighter - often within smaller triangles then the men's game. For a father teaching his son how to play the game it is great ... it is a bit slower so you can see plays develop better. And it teaches my son that there is more than one way to play the game and it is equally as entertaining to watch, if you watch it differently.
Too often we use the past as an anchor rather than wind for our sails of progress. I am teaching my ten year old to learn from the past to help shape a better future - be it a football match or a chess match. That different is not better or worse, but an opportunity to see things from a different perspective and learn and enjoy.
The Woman's WC is different. In ways it is better and refreshing but not in every way better. But different. And I for one am enjoying it with my ten year old - who one day wants to play for PSG and lead the USMNT to win the World Cup. Something the American ladies have done a few times already. Just saying.
6
My ten year old son and I are watching the women's World Cup. We enjoy it. It is not the same game as the men's game. The author is right. Part of the game is much nicer to enjoy. The passing is tighter - often within smaller triangles then the men's game. For a father teaching his son how to play the game it is great ... it is a bit slower so you can see plays develop better. And it teaches my son that there is more than one way to play the game and it is equally as entertaining to watch, if you watch it differently.
Too often we use the past as an anchor rather than wind for our sails of progress. I am teaching my ten year old to learn from the past to help shape a better future - be it a football match or a chess match. That different is not better or worse, but an opportunity to see things from a different perspective and learn and enjoy.
The Woman's WC is different. In ways it is better and refreshing but not in every way better. But different. And I for one am enjoying it with my ten year old - who one day wants to play for PSG and lead the USMNT to win the World Cup. Something the American ladies have done a few times already. Just saying.
1
"But often overlooked in these classroom and barroom debates are facts that many average Joes don’t like to admit: The top female sprinters and distance runners would easily outpace the vast majority of men."
This is a strange point. You could take the worst runner on any running team, male or female, and they'd outpace the majority of non-athletes, male or female. A below average high-school runner would beat the majority of non-athletes in a race. Maybe that's an overlooked point because it's irrelevant.
16
@QQQQQQQ Agreed. And while many average joes may not like to admit that the top female sprinters and distance runners can easily outpace the vast majority of men, the vast majority of average joes will admit that readily.
The arguments in this article, as well as in another in today’s paper about the supposed pay discrimination among female and male soccer players highlight just how self serving and corrupt the yelling about discrimination has gotten. It started with the less obviously disingenuous claim that women are paid 80% of what men earn (which relies on comparing averages rather than people in like jobs). The success of that approach has predictably caused the claims to expand to entirely bogus ones like this one.
Hopefully this particular demand will shine a light on how weak the discrimination claims are and help to push back on the other bogus claims as well.
5
This can change tomorrow. Women can flock to the WNBA, women's soccer, and women's MMA, and support athletes and teams by bidding up ticket prices and the cost of advertisements on TV. A women's Super Bowl would not be far behind. However, Rafael Nadal will still beat Ashley Barty 20 out of 20 times, even if he had to play with a 1960s wood racquet. People love quality food, clothing, books, movies, and experiences. No one cares if the chef is a guy or woman if the food rocks, yet the quality of men's athletic performance will nearly always be better at the top elite levels than that of women.
14
While the men are bigger, stronger and faster and benefit from access to better training and conditioning staff they are not necessarily more athletic or competitive than the women.
What surprises me about the women's game is their tactics,
the positioning of the players on the field , how well they seem to understand the game.
Good luck to them all.
2
Glad that many commentators realize that it’s about viewership and revenue generated. Also, to be frank, the women’s team have an easier time than the men’s team because of sexism: international male soccer talent is more likely to be discovered than female talent b/c women facing steeper barriers to playing sports internationally then men. So men are playing against comparatively more challenging teams. This is the unreasonable wing of liberalism
1
The men who are so invested in pointing out that the women's soccer team can be beaten my high schoolers always give me pause.
Boys who have gone through puberty so are, of course, stronger and bigger than the women. It doesn't matter if they are in high school or not. We know they are stronger than women.
We know it when we walk in the dark to our parking space in a darkened parking garage. We know it when we watch our drinks in a bar. We know it when we don't go to the bathroom alone. We know it when we ask for a hotel room that isn't at the end of a lonely hallway. We know it when we check the uber driver's name and license plate before we get it.
We live is reality daily.
It doesn't mean that the women's teams are not fun to watch. It doesn't mean they aren't skilled players. It doesn't mean they don't deserve equal pay.
5
@Kelly
The people that are making this comparison are doing so as a rebuttal to the commenters who are claiming that women are actually better than men. Your remark about women deserving equal pay is addressed very clearly by quite a few comments here.
5
If the US women's team is generating more revenues, than I don't understand why the Federation isn't paying them the same (or more) than the men. Could it be because if the men aren't paid more, they have a ton of professional league options than the women do? Fair is fair... but economics may be the driver here (and not race discrimination). Is it just a case of supply and demand? (I'm asking).
2
I personally do not care about watching sports and I do not really care about professional sports, In general, as a business, they revolve around attracting a paying watching audience.
But honestly I would like somebody to explain why a professional soccer women team should be payed the same of a professional soccer men team.Performance wise the two teams are not even close. If there was an "open league" women team would quite surely be at the mid to bottom of the league.
There are other performance fields, especially in the arts in which an "open league" thrives. It is of course different but we do not have "women" or "men" concert competitions. And the reason is because when it comes to the athletic side of the performances, not to mention the artistic side, women do not have any advantage or disadvantage in respect to men.
But soccer? Why should a professional athletes be payed when he/she is athletically inferior?
It is a question, not a statement.
10
I think one of the logical outcomes of the breakdown in the anatomical differentiation of gender will be the mixing of genders in sports. It would be an interesting experiment if done in earnest.
1
Not sure why sports such as soccer and basketball can’t be coed with each team fielding an equal number of men and women and required to play balanced teams. Might be more fun to watch, too.
1
@Rick
This seems like a equitable compromise, if segregation of the sports is going to be inherently unequal, force some integration.
But why make distinctions on gender in the first place, let people play based on merit and truly the best will win.
1
Sorry, but sexual dimorphism rules, at least in human sports.
That is, in most mammalian species, including humans, the male is larger, stronger and faster than the female. If this were not the case there would not be a need for separate men’s and women’s divisions in sports.
I could tell from the title of this article that it was written by a woman, and one who was seeking to argue that women’s sports performances were as important as those of men. If that is the case, why do almost all men’s sports performances command greater viewership and financial rewards than women’s sport performances?
11
@Mon Ray
You are being logical and reality based when writer is being purely ideological without any need to abide by basic laws of economics (supply/demand/profit etc.)
3
@Mon Ray
Again with the "male-centric" all-or-nothing attitude! And why is it that men typically equate "good" with money and attention from their peers?
Consider Olympic gymnastics; both sexes perform tremendous feats--and how many male gymnasts can contort themselves into a tiny ball, spring up and do a cat-like back-flip on a balancing beam?
So much for women not having good coordination or stamina!
There is no such thing as "equal pay for equal work" in a vast array of fields of endeavor. AS a previous commenter notes, female models make much more than male models for the identical job. Baseball pitchers all do the same job -- for a range of salary from $800K to $30 million a year.
Soccer is not medicine. It is a form of entertainment called sport. The number of people who watch and show up create the revenue. Compensation depends on revenue. Womens' soccer generates less revenue, hence the result that grieves Professor Ryall. She may be expert in philosophy, but seems weak on economics.
10
And the Team makes its statement today!
Records all around.
Hooray!
1
Wonderfully articulates many of the arguments I make to people who diminish women's sports.
I love the point on brute strength vs. finesse. I've found this to be so true in sports I've played and follow like tennis and volleyball and I'm sure it's true in countless others. As a women it is *so* amazing to see women who have the same anatomy as me-who menstruate & birth babies-compete.
@Liah
Nobody is diminishing the talent or the athleticism of the women.
They are questioning the faulty logic that wants parity in pay between the sexes when men bring in 50x more revenue than women for the same sport.
1
I am all for sexual equality, but am tired of hearing someone tell me that it is a problem if I don't show interest in soccer (men or women), WNBA, women's tennis, or any other entertainment product. Sure drama matters, but most won't choose to watch a random high school game when the option is a pro game. No athlete or other entertainer "deserves" to be followed. I don't need some stranger lecturing me on what I should like.
24
I used to run ultras (races generally greater than 32 miles). Very rarely would I beat all the women. It was usually a goal I had since winning was beyond my capabilities.
The idea of gender equality is a myth.
If the women were better than the men, at any sport, I would enjoy most watching the women play it.
But they aren't.
It is competition among the best in any sport that makes it exciting to watch and unfortunately the women are not the best at any one of them.
In terms of overall value, women are certainly at least the equivalent of men, but not athletically.
No offense to Ms. Ryall.
8
@Richard Phelps
SO women's Olympic gymnastic performances on a balance beam are unimpressive to you? If they don't impress then I will conclude that you are coming from a very ingrained chauvinistic pov. Sorry.
1
@Susan
men pay a heavy price for their athletic "superiority". Women live an average of nine years longer....
1
Contrary to the tagline (which appears to have been added by an editor since it doesn't appear in the piece), by definition gender is not irrelevant. The whole reason we have women's sports is because gender is deeply relevant: without segregation by sex, women's sports simply would not exist at the professional level.
"The top female sprinters and distance runners would easily outpace the vast majority of men; the top female soccer players would run rings around many male sides; and so on."
This is objectively wrong, at least when it comes to football (soccer if you must). National women's teams occasionally play practice matches against the youth teams of male clubs, and they almost invariably get thrashed. Even by the U-19s of second-rate clubs.
It's absolutely true that women's sports can be enjoyable despite the fact that by definition women's sports will never be the highest level of the sport. You can even say the lack of power in the women's game can make it more aesthetically pleasing. That's all well and good. But it does nobody any favors to repeat falsehoods about relative competitiveness among the sexes.
14
If they get the eyeballs they should get the money. It really is that simple.
Female models get more money than male models for a very good reason - REVENUE.
It's all about the numbers. Nothing else.
115
@P&L Except you can't generate eyeballs unless you're broadcast & given the opportunity to create greater audience.
14
If there is a market and opportunity to make money, networks will broadcast.
14
And the reason they are not broadcast is that there is no money in it for those who can broadcast. Of course no one knows, except a very few, what financial and other demands are being made. If they are overpricing their product then no one wii buy it. Additionally the reason you see obscure sports and other women’s sports on TV is most likely because there is minimal to no cost for picking up the rights.
5
I couldn't agree more. The women's game is exciting, very exciting, and I've loved watching women's soccer, as well as men's soccer, for many years. When national teams play, the women and men should be treated equally, including equal pay. The fields and facilities and accommodations and travel should be the same.
As far as professional sport, it's a sad fact of life that the real money is no longer just in the number of people attending, or even the refreshments and merchandise sold at the field. The really big bucks come from the TV and cable contracts. In a capitalist society, that's likely to overrule considerations of sex or gender equality.
By the way, the biggest bargain at our 1996 Olympics in Atlanta was women's soccer. We got to see doubleheaders. The two women's semifinals were back to back in the same stadium, and one ticket got you both games. Ditto for the bronze medal and championship games. And the games themselves were magnificent.
2
Apparently not many think that women's sport is more interesting than men's sports judging by such metrics as attendance, merchandising, advertising, cable and broadcast television revenue deals, scheduling, and the massive difference in which gender listens to and calls into sports radio and which gender does not.
And it's ok. Not everyone must be interested in the same activities at the same proportion.
Yet there is article after column after article arguing that men and women are the same or women are better than men and any differences in skill or interest MUST repeat MUST be the result of sexism.
Arguing that the best women athletes are better than most men may not even be true given how often we see women's teams getting smoked by male amateurs or teenage boys.
Feminists just can't seem to admit that there are some things that men as a group do better and enjoy more than women do. Sports is one of those things.
What's next, arguing that the pathetic level of basketball on display in the WNBA is somehow more pure than the elite game in the NBA?
This weird need to try to out compete men at things they can't win at seems to have consumed modern feminists. Strange.
Short of taxing men to give the money to women's sports or forcing men AND women to attending women's sporting events on pain of imprisonment, women's sports, with a few exceptions, will NEVER be as well attended or as remunerative as men's sports.
9
@Lilo
"Short of taxing men to give the money to women's sports or forcing men AND women to attending women's sporting events on pain of imprisonment, women's sports, with a few exceptions, will NEVER be as well attended or as remunerative as men's sports."
Don't give them ideas.
7
Women’s gymnastics are superior to men’s in skill and popularity. Take a look.
2
Some women's sports are more fun to watch than men's: volleyball and tennis. Some are less: basketball and softball/baseball.
Soccer to me is about the same, athletically speaking. The men may be faster overall, but at the World Cup level most of the teams are more than athletic and skillful enough. (As I type this, Team USA is beating Thailand 12-0; that doesn't happen in men's soccer.)
I'm delighted to root for the strong women of the USWNT, and I don't need a heavy dose of gender bias-shaming to do it.
2
This coverage is growing tedious. There may be more excitement for this Women's World Cup "than any before it" but it is not as much as the Men's. Will this be a fact forever? Maybe not. But it is now and it largely explains the various gaps that are being covered, and covered, and covered in this paper. And they are being covered at the expense of the games themselves. The NYT has devoted the majority of it's coverage of the World Cup to various gender issues and published very little about the games. And that's a problem. Please. Cover the games. Cover the players. Then let's see if enthusiasm grows and these events can get equal treatment on their merits.
10
@SJG I’m going to say that the vast majority American soccer fans have no clue who Ms. Hegerberg is
The fact that the writer chose to describe the beauty and wizardry of Novak Dvokovic's tennis game with a term like "brute power" betrays that she knows nothing about the men's game.
Perhaps she should realize that the best way to elevate women's sports is not to denigrate men's sports.
It's not a zero sum endeavor.
Also she would do well to remember that most women's sports are funded by the income generated by the men's leagues.
A little humility, not a grating sense of entitlement , will go a long way to garner some sympathy as well.
Also she could dwell on the fact that when given a choice, spectators , both male and female, chose to spend their money and time watching male sports.
If she doubts that she should watch any co-ed tennis tournament.
Empty stands for women's matches and opposite for men's matches.
Reality can be uncomfortable.
168
@GANDER-FIR If I want to watch brute power, I watch women's soccer.
If I want to watch a bunch of overpaid crybabies get hit with a piece of grass and fall to the ground, rolling around like they're dying, shrieking like toddlers, I'll watch men's soccer.
Reality can, indeed, be uncomfortable. You were saying?
20
You sir are mistaken. There are many people who, given the choice between a men’s game or a women’s, would pick the women’s. I am one of them. Any sport. Any day. I find the women’s division more inspiring and more exciting. They’ve had to overcome more struggle to get where they are.
14
@GANDER-FIR
It is true that audience still gravitates towards men's leagues rather than women's, but men's leagues still benefit from being more established clubs with bigger budgets for marketing, more tv time, and more media coverage. The newer men's teams start with the advantage of greater capital than women's teams do.
In spite of that, the most-watched soccer game in the US was the 2015 Women's World Cup final.
There will be a long curve of growth. Just as allowing/encouraging women to go to college doesn't instantly get women in C-suites and labs, it will take a while for women's audiences to catch up to men's. It will help a great deal with leagues and associations stop signalling that they consider the women players as lesser (side courts, unfavorable scheudling, etc.) We're in it for the long haul.
7
Ehh, I saw about 5 minutes of France Korea at a bar and during that span one of the french players made an absolutely brutal touch off a set piece. I could have done better and you wouldn't see it in the men's World Cup.
Also lets test this logic. All you need for art is passion, creativity, and drive. Therefore the scribbling of my five year old are just as valuable as a Monet. I mean technique is irrelevant right, that what we are saying here?
7
No football (aka soccer) fan judges a game based on 1 touch, by 1 player. I saw that game and the French were fantastic. And your comparison is insulting - I don’t think you’re an Emily. Way too defensive to be a woman.
1
I would like to know how much revenue the women’s team bring in (tickets, TV, and merchandise) vs the men’s team.
4
Gender is quite relevant because men are vastly superior at virtually all sports. For example, the WNBA exists only because the NBA subsidizes it. The WNBA can't exist on its own because so few people pay to watch the games or buy merchandise. This is just more politically correct talk that sounds good but has no basis in reality. Hardly anyone cares about women's sports at any level. Title IX has been the end of men's college programs as much as it has enabled women.
16
@Grunt I care about women's sports and men's college sports programs are doing just fine. Title IX allowed me to play three sports in high school and one in college. I received a scholarship and had no student loans because of that. Are you suggesting we should go back to the old days where women only watched sports and not participated? I sure hope you don't have any female children.
1
@Grunt
Title IX, now talk about waste of tax payer money!
1
@Grunt Except that it doesn't sound good because anyone with even a semi-functioning prefrontal cortex knows it's complete hogwash.
No mention of the WSL and the effort it made it equalize the pay gap between genders? SAD.
Both women and men shred. Yes there may be a difference in ability, but when you see a pro drop into an 8 footer at Hossegor or Peniche and tear it apart, it just shows the pure athleticism involved. The gender matters not.
I'm glad my favorite sport has decided to bridge the gap at the elite level and I appreciate that they are also sending the women out in massive conditions to test them as they do the men. Next step, sending them out to the banzai (pipeline) regularly in comp.
Well, this opinion seems a formulaic PC rant, and a rather prosaic and overstated one at that. I had already concluded it was a bit strained when at the end I came upon the telltale marker of trying too hard: "badass." Okay, badass...
The author seems to vacillate between claiming equality of market draw has already been accomplished and insisting on more affirmative action. Things have moved greatly in the direction of equality of opportunity, but to expect equality of attention and monetary reward when the market of commerce ultimately decides all is unrealistic, and to demand it absurd. At the higher levels of public exposition, professional or "amateur," sport is an obscenely mercenary industry, and often quite garish, tacky and corrupt in its greed. That's why I've been sequentially turned off from spectating almost all of them.
3
Oh my dear. The men in the comments are so sensitive and defensive! Why are you so threatened by women being the best in the entire world being paid commensurate wages? Perhaps you are simply threatened.
2
@Corinne
No they are simply pointing out the absurdity of the article.
14
@Corinne
Because we know you are hamstering and fulfilling your biological imperative to extract as many resources as possible as men whether you deserve it or not.
1
At the revenue generating level, sports are entertainment. What one of the entertainers gets paid compared to what another entertainer gets paid is usually determined by the market, or the expected market for those who put up the money to produce the entertainment.
I would go see a movie just because Meryl Streep is in it. Johnny Galecki doesn’t do that for me. Should they both always get the same movie contracts?
The paying audience decides. And if the men’s world cup generates 50 times the income that the woman’s world cup generates, that means the participants should not be paid the same.
If individual athletes don’t think their time and efforts are worth the remuneration they receive, they are free to stop competing, which is what professional tennis players and golfers face all the time.
5
If you truly believe that gender/sex is irrelevant then stop beating around the bush and start advocating for abolishing separate categories for men and women. Only then will we truly see equity in sports.
9
@MR Ahh, it's in the nature of any interest group to try to have their cake and eat it too.
My interest in men' soccer and women's soccer is identical, namely zero, and I am from Germany.
But complaining about the gender pay gap is ridiculous. Soccer is, like most sports, entertainment in a market economy. The more people watch it, the more it pays. If women (or men) would watch women's soccer on TV in the same proportion as they watch men play, the pay would be equal, since TV rights and money for ads would be equal. But they are not. Women are not watching women's soccer, at least not nearly in numbers approaching men watching "their" soccer. Which means less money for TV rights. Which means less advertising. Which means less money for the players in the event less watched.
If you can change this somehow, go ahead. If not, stop complaining.
18
Women's football/soccer is a much better game than the men's any day of the week, no matter the level. The women play tougher (less feigning injury/whining to the ref), & they show better ball handling and tactical skills.
I'm really looking forward to the WWC in ways I never do the MWC.
41
@Barton
Care to envision what would happen if US men's and women's team played against each other?
Hint, it wouldn't be pretty for the ladies.
Ideology doesn't trump simple biology.
Reality matters.
35
@GANDER-FIR
I had an acquaintance about 15-20 years ago whose sister played on the women's national team. He told me they would play the u-16 national boys teams for practice and that was about their their level on the male side. Don't know if this is still the case or if it was ever true. Can anyone confirm?
13
@Barton
You are welcome to your opinion. I have friends who think that minor league baseball is a better experience than major league baseball.
But both you and they are extreme outliers. The women's world cup generates a small fraction of the revenue that the actual world cup does.
15
I shake my head and wonder when - or maybe if - we’ll get our heads out. I cover sports for a small town newspaper. The money’s scant, but it’s fun and nice to know these kids are praised for doing well. The school has 100 students. Given this there isn’t a “jock class.” All kinds of kids play. If you show up, work, and care about what you’re doing, you’ll make the team.
I’ve wondered more than once why the boys’ teams get 2x, 3x as many spectators as the girls. Take softball/baseball. Yes, a baseball is smaller, faster, and hurts more. The fence is further off, the base paths are longer. While you can argue that baseball is a “harder” sport, softball can and often is just as compelling. The games are different. One isn’t better than the other.
The softball team is young but has been to the state semis twice in a row. Both times they got beaten by their arch rival. The boys? Not so good.
I’m frustrated by how few women coaches there are. I can only think of three. One of them over east is the head boys and girls basketball coach. She’s good and though they don’t have a lot of talent, they work hard and never quit. That is the ultimate test. Work hard. Don’t quit, thus the greatest sport is small town ball. Doing it for love and home town glory. So why aren’t more women in charge? I guess I’m asking that question about everything these days.
1
Probably because the overweight dad standing on the sideline is dreaming his son may just become a pro, we all do it for a while..... and so son X needs dad’s expert advice!
Myself, I cheer women playing sports and will gladly watch women's soccer, weightlifting, mixed martial arts, and so forth. I also watch with fascination women's collegiate softball, especially the pitching. But please, statements like "The top female sprinters and distance runners would easily outpace the vast majority of men; the top female soccer players would run rings around many male sides" are terrible, self-defeating arguments. You're comparing people of unlike training. The fact is, given equal training, men are vastly stronger than women. Take Olympic weightlifting for example. The record for 56kg men's clean & jerk is 170 kg. For 58kg women, it's 138 kg. In Olympic competition, only a 140kg woman, Zhou Lulu, has lifted more than the 56kg male record holder.
9
Wondering if any of the naysayers here have tuned in to watch these great soccer players in competition?
Fellas?
1
Talk about gender stereo typing!!! Why is Djokovac's sometime hitting the ball as hard as he can "brute power?" Henin sometimes hit the ball as hard as she can - why isn't that brutish? And what of Serena Williams, is she brutish and therefore masculine because she hits harder than most women? Want to call her masculine? And since when is grace a "feminine-like" quality? Watch Michael Johnson or Usain Bolt run and tell me they aren't graceful. Watch Roberto Clemente or Willie Mays track down a fly ball in the gap and make a diving catch, or Ozzie Smith go deep in the hole, pivot and throw to first for the out and tell me they aren't graceful. And yet, they are men. The nature of a capitalistic sports world is you get paid for what you produce. Women's sports don't produce as much revenue as men's sports, therefore women are paid less. Let's stop this gender stereotyping and look at facts please.
18
I have daughters who play soccer and I enjoy watching women's soccer, especially the U.S. WNT. I found myself watching the college softball world series the other day. I was impressed by the intensity and skill, but also by the infectious team spirit they all seemed to have. They were all playing for each other and celebrating their success. There is a weight at times in men's sports, the heaviness of loss that saps the joy from the game. Maybe because the stakes are so high professionally. Women's sports seem to create more episodes of pure joy than men's sports. That makes it as compelling as the highlight reel play. With the U.S. women's soccer team, you get the best of both - the highlight reel action and the pure joy. It is great TV.
39
@TL
Yes:Great TV.
U.S. 13, Thailand 0.
3
@vanraz Yes, running up the score against an inferior opponent is really great sportsmanship.
3
If gender were irrelevant to sport, nobody would object to Men taking spots on the women's world cup team.
Gender is deeply relevant. The best players in the world are all men. And media and advertising companies long ago discovered that most of the money is made from the competition with the highest caliber players.
111
@Jason
Surely you must have realized that this is a ideologically driven proposition, not a position based on facts or reality?
31
@GANDER-FIR
it's factually known that men are stronger and faster than women. In team sports, including soccer, at the highest levels of play, speed is what separates the best players. From Columbia University study below, more facts for you.
Men are better in spatial coordination and have a better sense of direction (usually!). They excel in math and are great at interpreting three-dimensional objects. They have a better hand-eye coordination and more precise control of large muscle movement. They have poor peripheral vision but better sight in bright light and a better sense of perspective.
5
@GANDER-FIR Men really are better because the best of the best are bigger, stronger and faster than their women counterparts. This is fact, not ideology.
3
As someone who has played sports nearly all of her 62 years, all I can say is that much has changed in my lifetime, but one thing is still the same: women athletes are still dismissed mostly out of habit and tired perceptions.
68
@Susan Tomlinson
Habit and tired perceptions? And all this time I thought it was the obvious fact that they're less physically capable and therefore less exciting to watch.
Otherwise, women would simply compete in the men's leagues on the merits of their skill, right?
45
@asdfj. While it is true that cultural norms have thwarted (you can look that up) the progress of women in sports, thankfully things are changing and they are starting younger and developing better skills. They play with an elegance and skill that is rarely matched by the men. Watch what you want, but in all but absolute brute force, women are catching up to the men in many sports and will be the wave of the future.
1
@Ann
Again, if they have "elegance and skill that is rarely matched by the men," they should be able to compete against men, right?
As for "catching up to the men in many sports," is there some testosterone-dosing program in women's sports that I'm not aware of? Even if there were, it wouldn't be enough to "catch up" to natural male levels of testosterone throughout development.
2
Longtime season ticket holder for the Portland Thorns FC in the National Women's Soccer League. We average 17000 fans per game - the biggest in the world. Portland is fully behind these athletes. My feeling is that if you claim to love soccer but don't like the women's game, then you're a fraud.
Also, having watch MANY men's and women's matches, I will tell you that the women do not roll on the ground like they've been shot with a rifle from the stands faking injury like the men do. They are tougher and play with pure athletic intensity.
97
@IanC Spot on. I've noticed a lot less "flopping" watching the Women's World Cup as compared to last year's Men's World Cup.
15
@IanC
I love baseball, hockey, soccer and golf. I find the women's games, in general, to be slower, less powerful and, to me, less interesting. I don't see how that makes me a fraud. I know what I like and what I don't, same as everyone else, and that I don't enjoy watching women's sports isn't a character flaw.
BTW, I also love football but I can't watch NFL games because I find them too violent. Does that make me a fraud?
20
@W. Freen Did you not watch women's hockey in the last Olympics? Those games were as exciting and fun to watch as any NHL games. There may have been less brute force, but there certainly wasn't any less raw skill.
7
I fully agree that women’s sports can be thrilling and should not be dismissed. But people also like to watch athletes at the highest level of human ability. This is the reason that minor league sports are not as popular as the major league versions. Minor league players are better than the average Joe but as long as there are players at higher level of physical ability to watch, they won’t get as many viewers. The same holds true for women’s sports.
132
@Stefan That's an apples-to-oranges comparison. There are many more minor league teams (and players) than major league, and there's no reason to watch them on TV when you can go see them for less than the price of a movie, in a stadium small enough that there are no bad seats.
You get a better show in, well, "the show", but it's a completely different world.
4
Sorry, but sexual dimorphism rules, at least in human sports.
That is, in most mammalian species, including humans, the male is larger, stronger and faster than the female. If this were not the case there would not be a need for separate men’s and women’s divisions in sports.
I could tell from the title of this article that it was written by a woman, and one who was seeking to argue that women’s sports performances were as important as those of men. If that is the case, why do almost all men’s sports performances command greater viewership and financial rewards than women’s sport performances?
9
@Mon Ray I can't believe that you ask such an ignorant and biased question in this age and era. Anyway, here is the answer: because of prejudice and discrimination - it is mostly men that control these decisions. In most countries a woman is paid less for the same job and/or performance as a man.
Or better, this happens because of people like you. You downgrade this profound argument because a woman wrote it. This is misogyny.
1
I prefer the NHL to the NBA. NBA players make a lot more money than NHL players. Do I complain about that? Do NHL players complaint about that? No. Why?
Because the NBA generates a lot more money than the NHL, so of course their players get a lot more money. That's the nature of a professional sport. How much you get paid depends on how much money you can generate.
So the author finds women's sports more entertaining. Fine. But not enough sports fans agree with her, so the Women's World Cup generates a small fraction of the revenue that the Men's World Cup does. As a result, an eminently fair one, the women get paid a lot less. The only difference between them and men in lower revenue sports is that men in lower revenue sports don't complain when they get paid less than men in higher revenue sports.
23
Ms. Ryall is a senior lecturer in philosophy? She should switch to sophistry. She writes,"The top female sprinters and distance runners would easily outpace the vast majority of men...." Ms. Ryall's point is...what, exactly? That most men would lose to Olympic-level female athletes? Duh! How about this one: let's take the #100 ranked male collegiate tennis player and put him up against the #1 ranked pro female tennis player. She plays into the doubles court and gets two serves; he plays into the singles court and gets one serve. Not competitive.
23
@Hugh MacDonald
Yeah, as a one-time philosophy major I thought that was poor logic and didn't serve the argument well. It also invited precisely the counter-argument you just made. What could have been an interesting op-ed, and made some useful points, drifted into clickbait and logical fallacy too often. Next time, find a writer who actually knows more about sport (and philosophy).
1
Apropos: This very newspaper's sports page had a quick link to World Cup news last summer, but not today. When you navigate to the NYT soccer page, you finally find a live World Cup scoreboard - or so it seems. Once you look closely you'll see it contains the scores from last July's men's tourney! As the author writes, "In 2019!"
4
Two articles on the same topic on the same day. Does the NYT have an agenda here?
From what I can tell, the sole point of this article is to convince us that we either do - or should - care about women's sports more than we seem to. We are apparently too dumb and sexist to appreciate that the sports are more entertaining and riveting than we think.
But I think we're perfectly capable of making those judgments on our own. Thanks anyway.
And what's with the description of Steph Curry as feminine? Really? Seems a bit sexist to me.
23
Time to lobby FIFA to call the 2022 tournament the Men’s World Cup.
2
Correction: The 1999 World Cup was won by the goalie who made a crucial save on a Chinese penalty kick. She kept her shirt on. Oh, and did I mention she was African American?
2
I cannot believe that the author used that annoying "In 2019!" phrase to complain about a group of seven-year-old boys not being woke enough. Time to send them to sensitivity training!
14
"Gender or sex is irrelevant"?
Then why do we have single sex teams? In fact, why do we have a "Women's" World Cup?
If gender were irrelevant, we'd have a World Cup, as Napoleon put it, "ouverte aux talents." That is a world cup where merit rather than gender was the only criterion.
Of course, there is a good chance no women would make it to any national team. But that is exactly the point -- the American women are asking to be compensated for playing at a level they haven't achieved.
When I play soccer in the big leagues (like never), I will be entitled to be paid a commensurately. Why should it be any different for women?
16
I am surprised that there was zero discussion of transgender athletes. Isn’t that the new undiscussed problem in men’s and women’s sports?
3
Sweet, I was waiting for this article. It's been a couple of days since the last one on this topic.
21
The call for equal pay for women for soccer is ridiculous. What about equal pay for rowers, and skiers, and gymnasts? They would all like to be paid as much as soccer players.
Why should a female soccer athlete be paid more than a female rower? Just because the male portion of her sport happens to be the most popular game on the planet?
There is no fairness in compensation for sports. The only thing that matters is if people watch it. And nobody watches the women's world cup, just like nobody watches the rowing world cup (or any other non mainstream sport really).
Nobody questions the athleticism of female soccer players. It's just cold hard viewership numbers. Stop whining, play your sport and realize how privileged you are that you have made it to the top of your sport, just like thousands of other Olympic athletes who never see a financial payoff.
21
@S The law says that the same work should be given the same pay regardless of sex. Otherwise it is sex discrimination. Suggesting that soccer plays should be paid the same as rowers makes no sense. Suggesting that women soccer players -- who practice and play as much or perhaps more than men soccer players -- and do better than them on very measure should get equal pay is the very definition of equality.
@Corinne What law is that?
1
I don't understand why columnists instist on writing outdated articles that would have been more appropriate for the 90's. The only people that parrot the idea that women's sports are lesser are the columnists propping up their strawman opinion pieces like this one.
3
Ms. Ryall,
You think soccer provides a, "crescendo of drama"? If they got rid of the off sides rule (the same with hockey), they might actually score once on a while! It would sure help the drama. Soccer players are good at keep-away, but they can't seem to figure out how to score.
By the way, gender is relevant. Men and women don't have the same skills, and they don't play the games in the same way.
4
Sports participation is a symptom of a larger problem: the idea constantly fed to us that females are more attractive, hence worthy of love and family, the smaller, thinner and more helpless they are, including wearing stiletto heels not conducive to human motion and fingernails not conducive to human activities such as playing musical instruments, building things, or creating and fixing things with the human hand. Conversely, we are still bombarded with the gender propoganda that larger and more muscular males are also more worthy of partnership and status. Both ideas are ludicrous. The Olympics are proof that when men and women do the same activities, their bodies look much the same. Compare gymnasts, boxers, skaters, skiers, etc. of different sexes and clearly they have more in common physically with each other than with people who do not play that sport. Form follows function. It's time we realize that males and females can and do perform the same human functions.
1
@Amy Luna
Most women ARE smaller than most men whether they're athletes or not.
Most women do not want to look like men, whether they're athletes or not.
No man can ever give birth, whether he's an athlete or not.
This is not "gender propaganda" but reality.
2
@Amy Luna True, but in any athletic function the larger and stronger sex will perform better. It's not a matter of sex, but of anatomy and chemistry.
1
@Amy Luna
Your points are valid but more importantly totally irrelevant to the crux of the argument made by the writer of the article.
2
Really this is about revenue, and revenue for sports is driven by TV viewership, ie, ad sales. The more us, the sports viewing public, watch women's sports the more revenue will increase and therefore the pay for the players.
Women's sports could definetely use better marketing though. sometimes it's so hard to find out details about events. I've seen this changing, but it's a slow road to go down.
Sports is so subjective though, you're evaluation of the Super Bowl is the perfect example. You, like many people, showed up for the long drive competition and instead got a beautiful game of chess, sadly, one you couldn't understand.
In professional league sports, we ask sports men and women to play for their country, taking time away from their teams where they make their living. Careers are often short, and there is a risk of injury whenever they step on the field. To compensate them for their sacrifice, we try to pay them for their time (we never pay as much as it is is actually worth).
.
The time of a professional men's soccer team member capable of playing on the national team is far more valuable than the time of a professional women's soccer team member capable of playing on the national team. It's not about effort; it's about what they're worth on the market.
.
Women's professional soccer barely survives as a going concern, particularly relative to the men's game. The market has decided what their time is worth, which is more than 99% of what any of the spectators' time is worth. But it's not worth a tenth of what the men are worth. Sorry -- if you don't like that unfairness, talk to an Olympic wrestler or swimmer about what kind of a salary they pull in.
2
I am amused by all of the outrage about this issue from people (and even worse-politicians) who rarely, if ever, watch soccer and couldn’t pick a U.S. professional soccer player out of a lineup. They certainly have no clue about the complexity of this equal pay issue...like the fact that the salaries of the women’s national team players in the professional league, unlike the Men, are subsidized by the North American country soccer federations. Both Men’s and Women’s national soccer teams are generally ignored except when some political issue comes up that upsets the elites. This is the root of the issue. The Men’s team is slightly more popular and plays in tournaments like the World Cup and Copa America that generate far more revenue than Women’s events. Until this changes, making politically correct demands and dragging the Men’s national team into this dialogue is a mistake. The Mexican Men’s National team is far more popular in this country and generates more revenue than our team. Perhaps it’s time for our players to start demanding a portion of the money they make in the U.S. in the interest of fairness. BTW, I was at the 1999 World Cup final at the Rose Bowl. It was anything but electric except for a few minutes at the end of extra time and the penalties. In a combined 240 minutes of regular and extra time in the Final and 3rd place game, zero goals were scored....proving that Women’s soccer can be every bit as much of a snooze fest as the last Super Bowl.
5
This is like saying a good, dramatic high school basketball game is as entertaining as an NBA game. That certainly can be true if you are a member of the school and are emotionally invested, or, if your kid is playing.
But absent some special interest, and looking at it objectively, bigger, stronger, faster is always better in sports. And certainly in soccer, that's men.
It is also why the NBA has to spend millions of dollars to keep the WBA afloat, and nobody really cares if it survives.
15
Can never understand why people claim to like watching men play sports more because they are stronger and faster, yet college football and basketball continue to attract large audiences...hmmm.
I'm thinking it's not the strength and speed.
2
@Shiloh 2012
College football and basketball are so popular because people get to see the future professionals.
How popular are women’s collegiate sports?
Ok, so riddle me this. why do women at Wimbledon for example, receive equal prize money for winning as the men, but only have to play 3 set matches? That's not equal pay for equal work, that's coddling women, or overpaying them. It's much tougher to win 5 set matches. More tiring, more demanding.
If women want equal pay in sports -- they need to do two things: Do the same amt of work as men and generate the same revenue.
Don't think that's happening.
And why haven't professional women's tennis players demanded that they play 5 set matches?
14
@Ralphie Wimbledon could always have the men play 3 set matches which might stop 4 and 5 hour matches. I'm sure the men would approve for the same pay and less work.
1
@markd but it wouldn't be as interesting would it?
2
@Ralphie
Women have lobbied for years to play 5 sets. It's the tournaments and broadcasters that limit them to 3
(diminishing returns on advertiser $ after a certain number of hours.)
It took baseball decades before their leagues were well-established. Marketing plays a big role.
You can't imagine what you don't see.
The easiest way to break up the boys' club would be to have women and men compete, equally, in the same league. Actually, that would reinforce the boys' club, since only a distinct minority of female players would make the cut, but it would allow lecturers in philosophy to rest easier.
But if that seems arrogant, just start supporting my idea.
16
@Wine Country Duden
Just makes it easier for the ‘boys’ to harass, demean and sexually abuse.
@Wine Country Dude Actually, if this were done, most professional sports would have zero females. These pro women should consider themselves extremely lucky for making money at something many more talented amateurs don't have the privilege to make money doing.
2
Inequality in the announcers’ booth is so pervasive I can hardly watch any sport. The men who run the networks deny women commenting on men, but have no qualms regarding men reporting women’s matches. Is there a maxim that states no women’s athletics is worth broadcasting unless men are doing the broadcasting? Likewise, men’s athletics must not be worth broadcasting if women are doing the broadcasting, since one such has never been aired. Fragile male egos? Maybe, whatever the reason, women are not free to play and comment without a male guardian.
2
@Linda Moore Does the name Mary Carillo mean anything to you?
2
@Linda Moore
Broadcasters are relentlessly market driven. Their listeners (mostly men) prefer male commentators. Don't blame the broadcaster.
1
@Rocky
Yes, name another.
This should be a lesson to any governing body, If at all possible cater to one gender. To do otherwise will get you lawsuits and controversy. Let the women have their own soccer association they can do and pay whatever they want.
4
@Brian
You'll note the women aren't suing to split the federation into two to promote equity. That would be suicide for women's soccer, particularly if all of FIFA did so.
4
Women receive 4% of sports media coverage overall and ESPN SportsCenter dedicates 2% of it's time to covering women's sports. Maybe this is because 95 percent of anchors, co-anchors and analysts are male. Or that 90.1 percent of sports print editors are male. It's hard to sell tickets if no one knows you are playing. Marketing and coverage go a long way towards generating interest and an audience.
Even this paper (which is doing a great job of writing articles about the Women's World Cup) has a digital link to "soccer" with current articles, but the stats and schedules listed on the right hand side are from the 2018 Men's World Cup. It would be nice to know when the women's games will be on.
Let's simply acknowledge that there is participation bias, there is still opportunity bias, there is still media bias, and there is still administrative bias. Although women have come a long way towards fair treatment in sports, there is still a long way to go. I, for one, am grateful that athletes like Ada Hegerberg and Alex Morgan are continuing to bring this issue to the forefront.
4
I could not agree more with the author that women's sport is just as exciting as men's, however the "equal pay for equal work" argument often ignores the fact that we are not paying these players to "play soccer," we are paying them to "sell ads, jerseys, merchandise, tv rights, etc." Soccer is just the vehicle for selling ads, in this case. The author fails to mention that the millions more people watch the Men's World Cup than the Women's and the direct result of that is billions of dollars more in ad revenue, ticket sales, merchandising, etc. that gets filtered through the game to national teams and players.
18
You'd might as well argue why Curling or Hand Ball does not pay as well as soccer since they also include your 3 magic ingredients. Or indeed why Lionel Messi or Christiano Ronaldo are paid more than others since it is a team game/effort. Find more fans, generate more revenue!
25
I enjoy watching women’s sports, soccer in particular. However, the pay scale is not just about gender equanimity.
If you look at World Cup $ generation, the men bring in billions (4 bil in 2015), women in the hundreds of thousand (300 thousand in 2015). So it might be a hard sell to get equal pay, but it certainly should be better than it is now. Particularly since the womens team in the US gets better attendance and has a much butter record world wide.
1
Honestly, how many of these articles can you push down people's throats? They always get the same negative comments because the opinion they try to force feed to everyone clearly doesn't make any sense.
What's so difficult to understand about the pay being based on revenue? It's not about anything else. There's a reason male players in the English third division make infinitely less money that EPL players. Even though they technically play the same game and also work hard.
The men's World Cup dwarfs the women's version in terms of revenue. USWNT players already make a higher percentage of the revenue they generate than USMNT players.
Finally, in terms of actually playing against men please give everyone a break. First of all, no person in their right mind would argue that an average dude sitting at the bar can outrun top female athletes in track and field. Second, how is that relevant at all? The fact is that in a competition of comparably trained men and women men will always win and it won't even be close.
The USWNT once scrimmaged against a high school U-15 boys team from Dallas & lost 2-5. And the boys stopped even trying hard in the second half. That was the most elite women's team in the world vs. 14-year old males who were nowhere near elite even in their age group.
54
The authors most important point is that the women’s team brought more money to Norway and may also come close in US due to the Women’s team success. There is a long distance between fair and equitable to equal salaries and thought ought to given to that. Women’s soccer is more of a nascent sport than tennis is now
I find the other arguments simple and unconvincing.
Women’s soccer is exciting to me though I am not an aficionado of soccer, because of the more frequent passing.
However the rest of the arguments seem simple and narrow.
To see spectacular talent and winners has always
been a thrill. If you can’t enjoy Djokovic play tennis and return serve that’s too bad. If you can’t enjoy the best player in history play against the one person he usually can’t beat, that’s a shame
If you claim that end of game excitement and winner in doubt, soccer is the worst among the major American sports, particularly after the first goal and when there are obviously superior teams in the early years of the sport. Tennis used to be there (women’s) but not as much now and pay is equal.
I think the bigger problem soccer has in the US other than fewer trans generational soccer families is that the sport itself has not adapted the rules to accommodate the greater talents in the men’s sport.
Other American sports adapt their rules( a bit too much IMHO) but the Greatest Sports event in the World can end on penalty kicks. What’s a crazy thing. Everyone but two players involved.
1
Women's sports can be as exciting as Men's sports. The women's soccer team may have legitimate complaints that should be addressed. But for this author to attempt to equate winning a women's World Cup to winning a men's World Cup. This is ludicrous. The depth of competition in the men's game is light years ahead of the women's game. That's why they are paid differently. This is going to sound very harsh but there's no polite way to put this. Women aren't as good as men in sports. That is not an "assumption", that is a reality. There are dozens of boy's collegiate teams who will beat the women's national team in a competitive match. Obviously that does not mean that women's teams should not be supported and their achievements celebrated - but it is still a biological reality. The power, pace and technique of the international men's game is far beyond the women's for a number of reasons. Generally speaking, people are drawn to watch sport played at the highest possible level. Ignoring this is absurd. "Woke" articles like this alienate people who are potential supporters of the team. Of course women should have the opportunity to be professional athletes and should be appropriately compensated for their achievements. But pretending that winning a women's World Cup is as big an achievement as winning a men's, or pretending that the standard of play in the women's game is just as high, that's just lying. Women don't need that. We can enjoy both sports for different reasons.
12
What an absurd article.
Sure, women's soccer is just as great a sport as men's but, on the whole, men's soccer has been considered the more entertaining variety and that makes all the difference in the world for a spectator who has a choice in the matter (everyone).
Why? Increased strength, speed, and financial stakes and in those attributes gender is deeply relevant, directly or indirectly. The women in the women's world cup are fast and strong. But they don't represent the pinnacle of speed and strength.
13
@LR Have you watched the US men play? Or at least that's what the tv schedule says they are doing, but there is limited evidence that what they are playing is soccer. The women, on the other hand, are sublime. They have skill, knowledge, and show the results of fine coaching. The men may be watchable for comic relief but the women are worth watching as soccer players.
6
@Elizabeth
What would happen if they played each other, or common opponents? Anything else is apples and oranges.
5
@Elizabeth
What's absurd is your the characterization of US men's team performance as "comic relief" , a team that qualified for semi-finals in Soccer World Cup, the toughest and most prestigious team sports event in the world?
Articles such as this and preposterous and snide responses like above doesn't help promote the cause you all claim to do so or paint the cause in a flattering light.
6
Author needs to understand the difference between providing equal opportunities vs forcibly engineering equal outcomes.
One is a worthwhile endeavor while the other is, in a capitalist and commercially driven Enterprise such as professional sports , downright preposterous.
41
@GANDER-FIR
Although it's just as preposterous, and infinitely sadder, than sport has become "a capitalist and commercially driven enterprise."
Since women are on average physically smaller, weaker, and slower than men, world-class female competition is, at best, on the level of male lower-tier minor league competition.
And yes, minor league sports absolutely can be fun to watch, and so can female sports. I love going to local A-level baseball games. But A-level baseball is not a massive cash cow with national primetime TV deals, and women's sports aren't either, for the same reasons. In the big picture, women's sports can't offer top-tier competition between top-tier athletes, and because of that, they'll always play second fiddle when it comes to drawing spectators. This seems logical and commonsensical to me. What's the problem?
35
You people Just. Don't. Get it.
It has NOTHING to do with skill, or even sex (or gender - I get confused nowadays). Its about viewership and advertising revenue. The last Women's World Cup generated $73 million in revenue. The Men's World Cup generated over $4 BILLION in revenue. That's nearly 55 times as much money. There is no industry on earth where you are going to get paid the same for generating 55 times less revenue. I'm sorry.
Stop making his about what it is not. Its not about being fair. Its about viewership and advertising revenue.
P.S. In 2017, the US women's national team played the FC Dallas under-15 boys' team and lost 5-2. That's correct: a bunch of 15-year old boys for the 12th-best US men's pro team beat the vaunted US women's national team, and it wasn't close. So if you want to make this about skill...
100
FYI - The game you reference was not a match - it was a friendly meaning it was a practice. The women would not go all out at a friendly when they were going to play another opponent just a couple days earlier.
7
@Mike
There have apparently been several other instances of the WNT faring poorly against youth teams. Of course, apart from the final scores, the fact that the WNT scheduled scrimmages against youth teams in the first place reveals their own assessment of the level they are playing at.
18
@Laura I'm sure the same could be said about the boys team. Maybe they didn't try that hard either.
9
Preach!
As in, "Good Afternoon, Choir, I see everyone's made it to the echo chamber, I'm ready to preach".
5
Next step? All men will be required to spend 1/3 of their sports watching time watching women's sports. Women of course will not have such a requirement because, being more sophisticated and refined creatures than men, they can make their own decisions of what to watch...
49
Really, all we as women want is the ability to live our own lives, play our own sports and earn our own livings without constantly being expected to justify our presence to armies of tiresome male bores.
1
@Ralphie
OMG, it's like The Handmaid's Tale, except the victims are now dudes and bros clutching remote controls! It starts with 1/3, then it becomes 2/3, next thing you know it's guys forced to watch women's sports 24/7, like some kind of feminist Clockwork Orange nightmare. The horror!
1
Yes, gender should be irrelevant in true tests of skill.
So let's get rid of gendered leagues, and let everyone play together!
Skilled pro women would surely be able to compete with the top pro men, since gender is irrelevant, right?
15
I'm a huge tennis fan and I'd prefer watching grass grow to Novak Djokovic. Thank you, Billy Jean King, for everything you've done to bring equality to tennis!
2
@Jason Tennis is a different sport. I actually like watching women's tennis. And btw, the top female players make pretty much the same prize money as male, I believe. For one very simple reason. They produce a similar amount of revenue because other tennis fans are like me and also like to watch female tennis players play. When female soccer events produce as much revenue as male they can ask for equal pay. It's as simple as that.
The problem with women's soccer is that it's noticeably much slower and the shots are weaker than you'd see in a any high level high school boys soccer game.
10
Seems like some women in suits might help make the transition to a fairer pay scale go faster too.
2
@Jennie It's already more than fair. In fact, female players get paid a higher percentage of the revenue they generate.
6
@ranndino
According to this article, the women's soccer is bringing in more money to the game while the players are paid less. Do you have a citation?
I am all for girls in sports, but at a certain age 12 or so, they should separate from the boy's teams. Too many parents and coaches are foisting their daughters on boys teams to get a leg up on other girls, when they go on to high school or older girl's teams. In the mean time, the boys are "carrying" most (not all) of these girls, while they lose games, game time and sometimes quit in disgust at what they see happening.
4
@Mephistopheles. What about individuals who play on teams according to their identity, rather than their biology? Seems to be heavily female-identified people playing on female teams, and the slow erosion of opportunities for those of female biology to have any opportunities.
2
@Raindrop Which is another reason why we need to give it a rest wit this "gender identity" nonsense.
1
This year some zillionaire types attempted to create a spring pro football league. They got players who had been cut from NFL teams, created 8 teams, and let it rip.
It ripped. And the league folded before the season ended. Why? Well, other than not having any name recognition for most teams or players, the reality was that you knew most of these players weren't quite ready for prime time and the team play reflected that as well. There were no great players. No great plays were made.
And there were no heated rivalries, etc. Quality of players and play matters.
3
To the extent context matters, huge sports fan, probably watch 200+ football games a year, haven't missed a World Cup game, (men's or women's), since maybe 2007, try to watch at least one game of each NBA and NHL playoff series in each team's arena and any Game 7s -- my DVR is consistently full of sports...
I would argue an underrated factor in why it's an uphill battle for women to achieve equality in sport is the sheer depth of institutional history of male sports leagues and organizations by comparison. I'm not suggesting it's the only factor, but it does take time to build connections with teams to make their patrons feel invested in a fan culture, and its hard to do so artificially. Two examples: My wife is a Cub fan because her parents were Cub fans, and their parents were Cub fans, etc. Meanwhile, having never been to Europe, its hard for me to get into club soccer because it feels arbitrary/bandwagon-y to pick a team in a city I've never been to.
It's certainly not the fault of any woman currently playing in the WNBA or the Women's World Cup that these are comparatively "new" competitions, but that still impacts how instinctively people are able to buy-in and care. Yankees-Red Sox, or Alabama-Auburn go back decades. Do the Chicago Sky have a storied rival that it's particularly satisfying for their supporters to see taste defeat? I'm sure they do, but its far less apparent at entry-level.
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My email is "girlslikesports927..." that should say it all. Although I am not a fan of soccer I can appreciate the great moments in that sport. If you want two men who are great about promoting women's sports look no further then Steph Curry and Kobe Bryant. Just youtube Kobe and Sabrina or Steph & Sabrina to see how actual male athletes respect the skill of women in sports.
Although I do agree that it's all about the "market" it's also about gender.... heck I can't get some of my female friends to even consider watching a "woman" athlete let alone call them WOMEN not GIRLS.
Yes we have come a long way baby - but we have miles yet to go! GIRLSLIKESPORTS!!!!!
2
Organized sports are a waste of time and money. Let children kick balls around; anyone over 12 has better things to do with his time.
If you are keeping score, you are taking it too seriously.
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@Jonathan Katz
Yes, no one in this world should do anything for fun. All work. Me robot. No feelings.
2
It is not about the women. It is about the inability to market anything in sports that is not the biggest and the best. As long as this mentality persists, women will continue to be second rate because they are not the biggest and the best.
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Thanks, this piece is so important. Judging from some comments, this is also why we need philosophy.
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@Andrew
A non sequitur of a response if there were any.
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@Andrew
Certainly, this demonstrates the crying need for more *lecturers* in philosophy.
Why is it always criticizing men (who are most of sport's general fanbase) for not choosing to watch women's sports? We don't criticize the (majority of) women for often proudly "not caring about *sportball*", for not watching women's matches, let alone (absurdly, right???) for not watching men's.
This is true enough: "...three things: excellence of skill, uncertainty of outcome and a crescendo of drama". But it is the first item, "excellence of skill" that is determination of many people's interest.
I'm glad the women can play and have opportunity to showcase at the tournaments and media. There is a limited time to enjoy watching sports. Given that limitation, I'll choose the highest quality, which is 99% the men.
Yes it is "unfair" due to genetics and physiology. But life is unfair, this is an early lesson of youth athletics! So this article is decent, but don't make people (men or women) "feel guilty" if they decide to abstain from watching women's sport with their finite time.
I'm happy to watch my daughter's team. At this moment I can choose between a 2019 men's qualifying match for the men's Euro 2020 cup, or a 2019 women's World cup. Glad I have the choice on TV, I'll choose the men.
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I am a women's sports official (Umpiring fast-pitch softball at the NCAA level), and I completely agree that women's sports can be just as fast, exciting, and thrilling to watch as men's sports. However, one thing is lacking, especially at the professional level - and that is a fan base.
Here's the problem. If women came out to watch women's sports at anything close to the same level that men routinely come out to watch men's sports, the issues of pay equity and publicity would disappear.
It is absolutely essential to give women's sports the same prestige and attention given to men's sports. But the key in doing that is in the fan base. If female fans showed up and bought tickets to women's soccer, basketball, and other sports at anything close to the level that sports-crazy men do, the problem would be solved. Alas, I can tell you from personal experience in youth sports that the fathers of young athletes are much more involved in their sporting lives than most of their mothers are. The result is that the fan base of female athletes remains impoverished regardless of the achievements of these splendid athletes.
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@Clayridge
A well reasoned and thought out response that is based on reality.
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@Clayridge
And what is wrong with women spending their time and money on the things that interest them, rather than things that people with an agenda tell them they're supposed to be interested in, in order to advance said agenda?
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@Clayridge I coached girls soccer for 10 years. It was great. But when they were done with soccer, they were done, period. Few of them continued to play on into their 20s, let alone follow the sport. My guess is if you look at the fan base of USWNT, you'll find half or more of it is male -- especially fathers supporting it to share with their daughters. Women's soccer generates only a small percentage of the men's game. It's not a matter of opportunity. It's a matter of interest.
5
Yes, an evenly matched women's competition can be interesting to watch even if all women involved would be unable to compete with men.
But revenues and fair shares are different questions. In many sports, the quality of play is related to how much viewers will pay to watch it. My local softball team has won 12 championships in the time the Red Sox have won 2 World Series. Yet none of us believe we should be paid like the Red Sox because we know the standard of competition in our league is less, there is less outside interest, and much less money coming in. (Actually we pay to play, a bit different than Red Sox players!)
In general the best women's teams cannot play their sport as well as the best men's, and would not beat the best men's teams. In that sense the women's competition is at a lower level. In general spectators only pay top dollar to watch the top teams. Women's teams playing at a level below that of top men explains revenue disparity.
That said: the quality of competition is not the only factor that can determine fan interest and spending. Women's sports advocates should abandon ill-conceived faulty arguments about (non-existent) pay discrimination, and instead focus on marketing their games to grow fan interest and attention. Women athletes can get paid more by bringing in more money from people watching their games, and they can do that by better marketing of what makes said games entertaining or otherwise worth watching.
17
Some sports like tennis the competition level for women is high enough to warrant watching. But even then you know the best women would have a hard time cutting into the top 100 in the men's rankings.
As for soccer, I've become a convert to soccer. But even among men I'm not going to waste my time watching a game in the Premier league between two teams bound for relegation. It's not that the game doesn't mean something to the teams, the quality of play isn't as high as when you watch two of the top six teams face off.
Ditto for American football. It's the end of the season and if it's a match between two NFL teams that have no shot at the playoffs, I'll pass.
So there's a lot to be said for watching the most skilled athletes in a sport go at it. When it's Steph Curry and Golden State v James Harden and the Rockets -- or pick any top teams -- you watch because you may see something amazing. but the WNBA?
And let's not blame oppression for women's sports not being that appealing. The fact is that to reach the top of any sport you need speed and strength and women will never close that gap with men.
And the fact that top women athletes can beat avg guys is irrelevant. I'm sure that a Div III college football team could be a team of 70 year old men. But that doesn't make div 3 games worth watching v Div 1 in most instances.
However, I am going to give the women's world cup a shot. We'll see how it goes.
4
I'm not sure what point this article is trying to make. That elite female athletes are better than the average man? That women's sports are sometimes better and more entertaining than the men's? All uncontroversial statements. The only evidence of discrimination that the author can come up with is that her 7-year-old was told by other 7-year boys that she couldn't play in the school yard! Of course, something said by a 7-year-old on the playground is hardly evidence of anything. if the school itself did this or sanctioned this, it would be instantly sued for gender discrimination (and would lose). There's only about a zillion opportunities these days for young girls to be involved in sports; and if anything our society puts too much emphasis on sports (for both genders) over academics, with young parents obsessed with getting their kids athletic scholarships.
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@R.P. This article is about the clear and well-documented pay inequities between men and women in soccer and every other professional sport regardless of how successful the women's sport is. It is making the argument that negative perceptions about girls and women in sports continue, and that they provide fuel to maintain the disparities.
25
@BG ..."the clear and well-documented pay inequities" correlate very well with the "the clear and well-documented" inequities of revenue generation and public interest (especially among women!!).
Let me know when a critical mass of women want to listen to people argue for 12-hours on the radio everyday about a game they weren't involved. We don't criticize women for not being interested in men's sports or women's sports, so allow men choose to prefer to watch men's or women's if they have finite time since, as the author admits, the quality is usually better.
Glad women can play more and more - school, rec league, NCAA - but as for "professional": life isn't fair. One of the first lessons of youth sports.
27
@R.P. I think the growth in individuals with male biology but female “gender identity” playing on women’s sports teams show a worrisome trend that female athletes may have trouble competing against average men. Why do so many athletes who are elite in female sports, intersex or chromasomically male or otherwise not clearly biological female? Is there a future for sports for biological females?
5
Seems like the only way to be completely fair and equal is to just merge all men’s and women’s sports into single, non-gendered leagues. If women can compete at the highest level in a given sport then they get paid on the same scale as men at that level. If they can’t keep up then they don’t make the cut but at least they have a fair chance. Same would apply for any man that doesn’t make the cut.
10
At this point in time , with such a steep increase in female participation in sports, and so many females now having benefited from Title XI, the question really becomes if these females will now embrace and support professional leagues for women. In my eyes, this is not the case. A view of the stands at any US pro sporting event for men shows a relatively high percentage of females in attendance. Contrast that to the NWSL trying to stay afloat as a viable professional women's soccer league in the US, and struggling to attract that same fan base.
Sporting events like women's gymnastics are so lucrative because those athletes can perform awe-inspiring feats that awe both male and female, and the meets are filled with drama. This is also the case to lesser degree with figure skating. But given the choice in popular pro team sports occupied by both men and women (soccer, basketball, ice hockey), the preference of this same pool leans towards the male athletes.
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@PN
Sure, I guess? But men's sports are just for a male audience and women's sports aren't just for women. The idea isn't greater segregation as women's sports grow in popularity. The whole point of this piece is that appreciation of sport at its purest is genderless.
Women are half the population, they could support women sport just by watching it. The whole thing would pay for itself.
If anything it is the men who are open minded enough to watch women sport. We need more women fans.
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@Antoine
Women have the right to spend their time and money as they see fit, regardless of people who think they should be spending more of the time and money on sports, rather than the things they themselves prefer. It would be better if the organizers of these events would accept the fact that, as you note, most fans of women's sports are men, and promote the competitions accordingly.
@Antoine I hear/see refrains like this. "We need more women sports fans." Why? Why, if women are naturally disinclined to like sports compared to men, do we need to undergo some massive social engineering project to generate more female sports fans for female sports? Why is it a problem that men are more into sports than women?
2
Your assumption that all women should support women’s sports because they are a woman is on one level degrading to woman and their cause for equality. Ironically these calls for equal pay in sports is probably more damaging to the greater issue of equality in the workplace.
1
Professional male athletes are not paid what they're paid because men in suits are benevolent. They're paid what they're paid because there is a market for their labor, and paying them more makes business sense for the men in suits.
Women can expect to be paid more when the men in suits realize that their business interests are better met by paying the women more.
Professional sports is a business, not a public trust.
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@Sam I Am
I pretty much agree with this assessment but I would say that if it is indeed true that the US women's soccer team actually makes money and in fact more than the men's team, then they should get paid appropriately.
E.g. some percentage of the revenue, higher wages perhaps or whatever a fair means of compensation may be in this case.
It is evidently difficult for the reason you identify for the women's team to apply market leverage to their position but if they can make case for underpayment on some other basis, then they should make it, simply out of self interest.
I.e. this is not a "justice" issue but one of effective negotiation.
It could be made into a justice issue by the explicit adoption of a policy to promote women's soccer at public expense, for example, but that is a different case to be made and clearly depends on the social values a state may wish to advocate for.
In the meantime, people do indeed vote with their feet.
5
@Econ
Most of the money involved, however, is from FIFA, where the men generate 50 times what the women generate, so the share the men’s teams get is higher than the women's teams.
7
@Sam I Am - Like all markets, a labor market is not necessarily free or transparent or fair. For the record, the suits never think it makes "business sense" to pay more for labor. They always work hard to pay less. They will collude in Silicon Valley as in any other industry. How embarassing that the discourse around labor (in the comments of this paper about sports) has to sound like the old views of old boys' clubs. Not to mention the patronizing tone.
1