With on-going women’s football world cup, a news broke out about how the US women’s football team, despite being a dominant side, being paid as low 40% that of the men’s team. The media houses who seek opportunity for a propaganda that they can run to keep their channels running 24*7, went berserk this time too.
This started with the US women’s team, currently ranked number 1, crushed Thailand team, ranked 34, by 13–0. Well, bravo. But, how does this bring in pay disparity in the picture?
Earnings from Entertainment/Sports, like any other business, depend upon return on investment basis. For assessment, lets compare last world cup event of both men’s and women’s football. As per men’s football world cup in 2014 had a total viewership of 3.2 billion viewers* while women’s world cup in 2015 had a viewership of about 800million viewers*, that is men’s world cup had about 4 times the viewers.
*References: men’s football viewership and women’s football viewership
As opposed to the viewership difference, the pay disparity is not of that magnitude. Comparing the US teams only, as per report*, the men’s team earn 2.5 times more than women’s team. If you basis the salary of players on viewership, the women’s team appears to be paid relatively generously.
- Reference: the US football team earnings
From an Indian’s perspective, this looks more like reservation system, where, under the garb of equality, politicians and pseudo activists with the help of their media friends, try to run the propaganda for reversing to status quo, instead of fighting to bring in the true equality.
The problem is not the propaganda, because to run a 24*7 news channel, they don’t have enough news that fit their agendas. But this makes the real issue disappear from the scene before seeing any success. The feminist train, in this case, has become so overcrowded by radical and motivated agendas and non-issues that the core idea of feminism seems to have alighted on a deserted platform. While they should be focusing on important issues like several states banning abortions apparently for religious regions, they are wasting their energy on non-issues. Probably because that sells more in the media, oh… they themselves seem to care about return on investment too 😉
Disclaimer: As opposed to the title of this article, my motive was to distinguish real issues from propaganda so that the idea of feminism wins in the long run. This debate could be perennial, but I am covering one issue at a time. Stay tuned for the next article.