WNT, the acronym for "Women's National Team," applies to all sports and is used by a number of English speaking countries (e.g.: Canada, England, New Zealand, USA). The term is used within a sport's community when there is only reference to that specific sport (e.g.: "We got tickets for the WNT's next home game!"). When clarifying which sport or which country's team, the reference might be, "the US Basketball WNT" or "the Soccer Germany WNT."
Contents
- Gender Discrimination at the 2015 FIFA World Cup
- National Team Call Ups
- Pay Gap
- Popularity of Womens National Team Sports
- References
Not all WNTs are paid (professional) or have a women's national league from which to draw new players. When women professional athletes are able to dedicate themselves full-time to developing their skills, they raise the level of play in a sport and provide much higher caliber Women's National Team players. Most top women athletes must work full-time jobs, in addition to their training, practice and competition schedules.
In the United States, women's pro sports teams and leagues are still relatively new and athletes under-paid as of 2005. In America for instance, 51 years after inception of the men's NBA, the WNBA began its first season in 1997. Salaries are surprisingly low for such highly skilled athletes. The 2005 WNBA team salary cap was $0.673 million. The men's NBA cap was over 60 times higher, at $43.87 million. The WUSA became the first American women's pro soccer league in 2001. Fans enjoyed women's pro soccer for three seasons before executives announced suspension of the league for lack of financial sponsorship and in spite of the fact that the US Soccer WNT was rated one of the world's top teams. Absence of a women's pro soccer league in the United States makes it difficult for the Soccer WNT to find new players who are ready for international competition. A 2004 effort to revive the WUSA was launched. In 2008, an organization called Women's Professional Soccer was formed and began playing pro soccer in 2009. The WNBA enjoys financial backing via the NBA and supplies a stream of professional players to the US Basketball WNT.
Gender Discrimination at the 2015 FIFA World Cup
At the 2015 FIFA Women's World Cup held in Canada, a group of international players filed a lawsuit over the issues of discrimination. The women were forced to play on artificial turf, rather than real grass that the men played on in the 2014 FIFA World Cup. Sydney Leroux, a member of the United States women's national soccer team stated "It is a gender equality issue. No chance men will ever play a World Cup on turf. I think the women are being treated as guinea pigs." Her teammate, Alex Morgan, is one of forty plus international players who have filed a lawsuit against FIFA and the Canadian Soccer Association, claiming gender discrimination since men's games are always played on grass.
Turf is often believed to cause more injuries than grass-playing surfaces. Dr. Michael Freitas, associate professor of clinical orthopedics and team doctor for the Western New York Flash, says it's difficult to determine if injuries are more prominent on grass or on turf. In 2014, he treated three players who suffered from major injuries on different types of playing surfaces. "This illustrates the fact that we don't really know if one is better than the other," he says. "But from a lot of players I've talked to, artificial surfaces can be harder, less cushioning, and they may get more aches and pains as opposed to a true catastrophic ligament rupture. I don't know if those symptoms are captured in the studies we see."
Women at the 2015 FIFA Women's World Cup were also subjected to gender testing before they were allowed to join their respective international team. In the past, verification of gender has been verified through physical exams, hormone, and chromosome testing. According to FIFA, "It lies with each participating member association to ... ensure the correct gender of all players by investigating any perceived deviation in secondary sex characteristic." Players subjected to the testing were amused by this testing, however some found it humiliating. Gender testing also prevents those who do not identify as cisgender from participating. FIFA rules do call for gender verification of all players, although there is no record of male players ever being tested.
National Team Call-Ups
National team call-ups refers to the selection of players to represent their national team in their respective sport for competitive purposes, such as the Olympic Games. Players are selected based on their performance in their professional sport, however not all players have to be considered a professional to be eligible to represent their nation in their respective sport. National team call-ups sometimes interfere with the schedule of domestic professional leagues. National team eligibility rules vary by competition.
Pay Gap
The gender pay gap is prominent in professional sports, as well as for members of their respective national teams. When the United States women's national soccer team won the 2015 FIFA Women's World Cup, the team received $2 million total in prize money, while Germany national football team men's side received $35 million for winning the 2014 FIFA World Cup. Teams that were eliminated in the first round of the 2014 FIFA World Cup collected $8 million in winnings, twice as much as the winner of the 2015 FIFA Women's World Cup. Women's sport in England only receives about 0.5% of sponsorship money, leaving many women seeking part-time employment Revenue generated from women's sports is much less than that generated by men, contributing to the lack of funding and lower salaries.
Salaries in the National Women's Soccer League range from $6,800 to $37,800, below the U.S. minimum wage. In comparison, the average salary in Major League Soccer was $207,831 in 2014. However these numbers are skewed due to large contracts for star players, where 83% of the league makes less than the league average. Many women athletes rely on sponsorship and endorsements to make up for low salaries, yet men on average also make more money through sponsorship.
The budgets and wages for women's sports teams is less than their male counterparts at the same level. For collegiate sports, Title IX legislation was passed requiring universities that receive federal funding to provide equal opportunity and funding to male and female sports programs. However a study performed in 1997 showed that female athletes received nearly $143 million less than their male counterparts during the previous year.
Popularity of Women's National Team Sports
In the United States, women represent 40 percent of all athletes, yet they only receive 4 percent of sports media coverage. In England, only about 2 percent of mainstream sports coverage is dedicated to women's sport. Due to the lack of popularity of women's sports, many women athletes struggle to find employment, with many also seeking part-time jobs.
In September 2014, CBS launched the first-ever, all female talk show titled We Need to Talk. The show discusses the overlaps between sports and society for women, drawing comparisons to shows like The View (U.S. TV series), but still featuring sports segments and clips. The format of the show is not the same as other popular sports broadcasts, such as ESPN, and the shows producers maintain this was done to target more women viewers.