Disgraceful Earnings For ‘U.S. Women’s World Cup Champions’: As A Woman, Should You Care?

While the U.S. Women’s World Cup Soccer Champions took home a team prize of $2 million on July 5, is it enough of an earning? Still unsure? According to Politico, FIFA, the international body that runs the tournament, awarded the 2014 Germany’s Men’s World Cup Champions a team price of $35 million. Even more interesting, the U.S. men’s soccer team, who rank 27, lost in the first round of the 2014 games and yet still took home a team price of $8 million.

FIFA is the sponsoring body of both the men’s and women’s World Cup events. The 2015 Women’s World Cup Soccer Championship event was the most watched soccer game in history, according to the New York Times. Despite this fact, the payout for the Women’s World Cup Champs remained 2 million. The National Women’s Soccer League reports that they are able to pay their players, on average, 6,000 to 30,000 per year in contrast to the Men’s League salary cap of $3.1 million. The disgraceful pay out to the U.S. Women’s World Cup Champions at least bumps some of their earnings up from poverty or below poverty line for the year.

Why should you care about all of this if you are a woman? Disparities in pay, on average, also extend to male and female minorities in the workforce, as they do the same job as a non-minority. Disparities exist in health care, as well. While one may not think of a health care disparity when looking at the healthy, vibrant Women’s World Cup Champions, it helps bring focus to exactly what a disparity is.

Income, ethnicity, place of birth, gender, gender identification, and age all play roles in many forms of disparity. The Inquisitr noted this in a 2013 article. The U.S. Women’s World Cup payout brings focus to how lower paid individuals, whether male, female, or any minority individual, tends to suffer more health care disparities. According to the Census Bureau, 48.8 million people in the U.S. in 2013 had an income below poverty level. In health care, a disparity is based on health outcomes in relation to all people.

The women’s World Cup champs are not alone in getting paid less money for doing a job with the same rules, same venues, and same expectations. Nursing, for example, even though female nurses, despite ethnicity, outnumber male nurses by 10-1, according to a recent report in NPR, male nurses still tend to earn roughly $7,700 more per year. According to Forbes, worldwide, women earn 77 cents to the dollar that men earn for the same job.

There are many thoughts around the pay disparity involving men vs. women in sports and in all other occupations. The U.S. Women’s World Cup Champions have brought this issue to the forefront once again. Perhaps focusing on this disparity will bring our focus to the larger issues involved.

[Photo by Kevork Djansezian / Stringer / Getty Images]