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Coming up on To the Contrary, they've put forth their skills, their energy.

They put forth so much and carry their countries on their back, and they do deserve that pay equity with the men.

(Intro Music) Hello, I'm Bonnie Erbé Welcome to To the Contrary, a discussion of news and social trends from diverse perspectives.

This week the FIFA Women's World Cup and Equal Pay.

We talk to Treisha Hylton, an assistant professor at Wilfrid Laurier University who has written various commentary pieces on the social impact of the event.

Welcome, Professor.

How are you?

Thank you.

I'm doing well.

I'm enjoying the World Cup thus far.

Let's get first to the equal pay agreement that the teams agreed to.

What is happening with that?

Is it going on?

Is it has it been paused by either side?

Please tell me about that.

Each country has different different agreements with their football federations.

And there's a couple of countries, Canada, Spain, England, all have discrepancies in terms of equal pay and women fighting for that.

And sometimes it's not even equal pay.

It's paid that their federations say they would give to them and are no longer supporting them.

And here in Canada in February, there was another funding dispute in the Canadian team.

And it comes, you know, four or five months right before the World Cup begins.

You know, in my article, I say women play through a lot.

And that is a common statement within the sports realm in terms of you just have to play through it.

And for women to have to play through the idea of not having equal pay for equal play is an ongoing issue.

Now, I have seen an article that said that the women's team has the highest scoring game of all time, and generally speaking, has higher audiences than the men's game.

Usually in other men's pro sports, it's it's all about your value, your market value to the team, which there's some subjectivity therein.

But if their ratings are higher and presumably revenue to the team to the federation is higher.

How could they get away with not paying the women?

Yeah, and that is that is common in the US team and the Canadian team in which both of them have pretty good ratings.

What also both teams have done better at their World Cup.

The US is going after three World Cups championship in a row and the women's.

The Canadian National Women's team has done significantly better than the men's team.

So it's not only viewership and doing better, it goes back to a systemic issue of how women are valued in sports.

And generally it's been a 20 year battle of trying to get equity within the pay scale.

So, you know, folks will say, well, you know, women's sports don't generate revenue.

Women's sports, you know, aren't as exciting.

Women's sports, those are all patriarchal, sexist things in which how we see sports is actually through a patriarchal lens.

And I'm not sure if you've seen the video of the French team in which what they did was they use AI to show men doing the moves when in fact it was actually the women.

And it actually goes into our consciousness about how we see women doing the exact same move versus men.

So that is an example of when people say it's not as good or it's not as smart, it is all of it is marketable, all of it is fantastic.

It comes back to a systemic issue of pay.

But let me ask you this, because it's great to know that the women's ratings are better.

But of course, what sports networks or broadcast networks pay per viewer varies by show.

For sure.

So do the do the advertisers pay the same rate per show, per viewer for women's soccer that they pay for men's?

Or does the do the men's?

And that's really up to the viewership and that's up to how the broadcasting stations want to invest.

Right?

So the reality is there just isn't enough of women's sports, period, being shown.

Right?

So what you have to do is make it more presentable to then make a case to say, do we want to pay more?

Do you want to pay less?

But at this point, we're not even presenting women's sport as much as we should.

You look, we don't get all of the WNBA games.

We don't get all of the soccer games.

and the national League.

We don't get all of those games.

So it's really hard to compare when you're not putting in the same investment in women's sports and when we do that, certainly we could have a comparison.

But I also would argue that if we do that, we would need time because all people have known is women's sport for 30 years.

All people knew was the NBA and then the WNBA came and you know that league had to play so much catchup in terms of owning their own space and owning the fans are there, you know, but owning their own spotlight, if you will.

Well, the the leagues obviously spend different amounts on promotion as well, as I understand it, like the Saudi Arabian tournament of a couple of years ago, there was a whole lot more spent on promotion of the sport and promotion of the event before it happened than has been spent in Australia this time.

Yeah, And again, that goes to different countries and exactly what they're able to invest in, you know, so a country like Zambia probably doesn't have the same funds as a country like the U.S.

So you see that discrepancy and you see that in the World Cup.

You know, one of the advantages that the U.S. have in the World Cup is the U.S. has probably the best training grounds.

So even though women in the States are fighting for pay equity and the U.S. team did win a 20 year battle in comparison to other countries, they have better playing field.

So the reality is that they'll probably get better results because they, in that context of women's sports, the U.S. probably has the best training facilities and access to coaches.

So it really depends.

This is a global issue.

And then when you look at the global issue, you take into context different countries.

Then you have different stories.

You know, you have the South African team leaving the field to say, I'm not playing because of poor conditions leading up to the World Cup.

So it's really hard to put a blanket statement on women's sports because it's so diverse within each country.

And then when you get into each country, it's even more diverse, right?

So I always say soccer has to go back to grass roots and grassroots includes women that are black, women that are indigenous, disabled, queer, trans.

It begins with that sort of community effort and not so much the idea of the world stage, although we accept the world stage.

But soccer began in the community.

And you know, when we think about increasing participation, we should start there.

Recently, the top salary in the men's League, U.S. Men's League was $125 million.

The top salary in the women's league was just more than half a million dollars.

That's a factor of 250 times as much that that the man was making when compared with the woman.

Is this true throughout all the pay levels?

Is it just if this is true throughout most sports, with the exception of tennis, in which tennis, the Grand Slam tournaments, it is pay equity throughout all four grand slam tournaments, which are Wimbledon, Australian Open, U.S. Open and the French Open.

And why that is, is also because of equity.

You know, Venus Williams spearheaded that.

I was going to say, is that because of the Williams sisters and they were monumental in terms of of getting pay equity with that in tennis is one of the first sport to do it.

And how they came about doing that was said, well, they did have the viewership, they did have the support.

But you're right in terms of, you know, you had two superstars really taking the sport into a broader a broader culture, if you will.

Very interesting.

So if this goes, if this kind of ratio of 250 to 1 goes down through the levels, is the contract that was agreed to last year to equalize men's and women's soccer pay in the US, is that going to fix that?

It should fix it at the World Cup.

That's one piece, but it doesn't mean it's going to fix it at a professional level.

Really OK, so it's only this agreement is only for equal pay at the World Cup.

This agreement is for equal pay at the World Cup.

This is not MLS and this is not the Women's National Soccer League.

Those are completely two different things.

Right?

You have your your governing body, which is your National Football Federation, and then you have pro sports.

So and, you know, we welcome the pay equity at the World Cup because women do deserve that.

They put forth their skills, their energy, they put forth everything.

And you see that on their faces when they're playing, they put forth.

So much and carry their countries on their back.

And they do deserve that pay equity with the men.

But that doesn't include other professional leagues and professional leagues also vary from country to country.

It may be different playing soccer slash football in England versus the U.S. in terms of, you know, the the professional pay for women.

Now what I'm talking about, obviously this is a global issue because soccer is what we call soccer, what other countries call football is a global sport.

I remember being, you know, 20, 30 years ago, being in a hotel in Turkey or Peru and seeing at that point the men's games, the U.S. men competing.

So and it's what my point is, it's watched all over the world and has been for quite some time.

But what are the five best countries and what are the five worst countries?

If you could make a comparison like that for pay equity in the sport?

So it's really hard to make that distinction the five best than the five worst because I think each country is very different.

You know, it's hard for us as Canadians to really compare ourselves against the U.S. You're a nation of about 350 million people where we are a nation of 35 million people.

So that comparison is hard.

What I invite countries to do is to look at themselves and actually see where can we begin?

Do we begin on the playground?

Do we begin in kindergarten?

where do we begin and where do you want to go?

What are the progress?

I wrote in the article what 2027 looks like depends on what we do today.

what types of advocacy, How do we make sure the women at the World Cup are fully supported not just in pay equity, but training grounds?

How do we, you know, give them proper transportation to the stadium?

How do we give them proper accommodations and so forth?

So this idea of this country is ahead and this country is behind.

I leave that within context.

It would be hard for me to compare Zambia against the U.S., Right.

But even with different even rich countries versus poor countries, you could still make a comparison, could you not, between how they pay the men versus how they pay the women in those countries.

There isn't a country that's winning in pay equity, that's for sure.

There isn't a country that stands out to me that says, you know, we treat we treat women just as well as we treat men.

In terms of sports, I don't see that I, I don't see a country that has paid its women athletes well with the exception of tennis.

Again, there are countries that are fighting, like I will say that Spain is fighting, Canada is fighting.

The U.S. did win.

They won.

But that win was over the course of 20 years.

Right.

So we're not going to achieve this idea of equity over this World Cup.

But what we need is something sustainable.

What we need is to make sure that, you know, teams like Morocco and Haiti, that this is not a one off, that they actually build on this, that there's actually young Moroccan girls having the opportunity to play at a football pitch.

Now you say let's look at what kind of sporting facilities they have, what kind of opportunities for kids to play in playgrounds.

I don't know if you mean in school or just public playgrounds It could be both playgrounds and public schools and the ability to have access to recreation facilities.

Does this sport have the money to provide those facilities in the U.S.?

100%, Yes.

Yes.

Yeah.

If there's one thing the U.S. has is the access to those facilities.

Absolutely.

And it has it has the money for those facilities.

It's a matter of how to engage young girls to use those facilities and to actually do outreach programs promoting sports for, you know, grassroots organizations, introducing soccer, introducing other sports, if you will.

But, yes, 100%, I think I think the majority of the countries with more money.

Absolutely.

This includes the U.S., Canada, Spain, the countries that are rich in soccer.

They all have those facilities because they have those facilities for men.

So that means they can have it for women as well, we could share those facilities.

Right.

Is there any movement to do that, to share facilities maybe you cant increase pay at the moment, but you share the facilities?

I mean, there's programs here in Canada in trying to increase the participation of young girls.

There has been a drop off, obviously, with COVID-19, there's less girls committed to playing, but there is still a movement of trying to have young girls participate in not just soccer, but sports overall.

But, you know, I remember working in a newsroom, a TV newsroom in the eighties, and the news director who was a woman, one of the first in the DC market anyway, in the country, perhaps.

And she would talk about she had to run.

She had to leave because she had to take her daughter to soccer practice that's been going on for close to 50 years now, where schoolgirls have been exposed to and excited about soccer, even more so than the Native American sport, which is baseball.

What happens is we have to research what a drop off is.

So why do girls stop playing sports at a certain age?

There's a big drop off between high school and university slash college.

The biggest that's the biggest drop off.

But there's also a drop off into high school.

So what is happening?

How come, you know, from preschool to grade eight, how come there is that interest?

And then when you reach high school, there isn't.

So there's something going on.

And we have to research that and we have to research that to say, why do girls either they quit, maybe, you know, something happens in their life, they're disinterested and maybe they actually don't even have there's lots of high school teams that don't have equivalent girls teams.

I've gone to high school where they had a soccer team and probably didn't have the equivalent of a girls soccer team.

So do they have equal opportunity as do they?

Do girls have equal opportunity as they move through their careers, In terms of sporting?

Do you think?

I mean, we've been talking about unequal facilities, for example.

I presume that applies at college as well.

Is that part of the factor or is it are we training enough women soccer coaches?

What do you think the problem is?

what could contribute to the drop off?

Women and girls, sorry, are underrepresented in every single sector of sports: coaching, participation, pay, and even more so for racialized individuals of black, indigenous and people of color.

So at every step of the way, we have to make sure that we're including everybody.

And I always say you have to start with the most marginalized person, because when you start with the most marginalized person, you automatically get everybody right.

So I think, yeah, the training facilities aren't the best.

We could go look at a college now, at a premier college now.

And you know, you look at the women's basketball team versus what the men's basketball team have and it's a completely different environment.

And that environment, you know, it prevents us from reaching our full potential in sports.

So, yes, it's everything.

It's facilities, it's coaching, it's our ideas about sports that we it's our patriarchal ideas about sports that we have to change and we have to challenge ourselves.

We have to challenge ourselves in terms of, well, how do I make it better?

There was recently a controversy about the FIFA or one of the governing bodies banning the women's or looking down with disdain at the women's team, wearing an armband that was supportive of LGBTQ rights.

Could you tell the audience about that?

What happened and what does that say about the proportion of gay people playing or lesbian and gay people playing soccer in the men's and women's teams?

Queer folks, have always been policed and this is no different.

There's been a backlash and onslaught of just backlash against participation of queer folks, including trans folks, including non-binary folks.

Just an entire backlash of hatred, really.

And really not allowing people to participate.

And all the research says that when queer people participate in sports, it makes the sport better.

It makes the sport more inclusive.

There is no evidence saying that, you know, trans folks are ruining the game.

All of the research actually shows a different sign that this makes the game more inclusive.

It challenges us to really think about, you know, sexism, patriarchy, homophobia, all of this versus what is spewed to us, that they're ruining the game and that not true.

So this comes as no surprise to a lot of people that they weren't allowed to wear it because this also is an ongoing issue.

Now, are the women's team members more interested in social justice than the men's team?

Do they do more activity about it, including climate change?

I think the women's team I don't know if they're more interested in it.

I think they have been vocal about it and they've been vocal about it because of their situation.

So they've been vocal about it because they've experienced oppression and I think that is that is a big factor of it.

Whether or not the men's team do it, I don't know.

That would be you know, that would be something you could ask them.

But I think for some women there are more vocal.

But it doesn't mean that all women need to be vocal just to be themselves.

It doesn't mean that all women need to be social justice advocates because they want justice.

Women should just be able to live and be themselves.

And Megan Rapinoe, she has done the most work for social justice of any player.

What, if anything, does that say about women's sensitivity to social justice versus men's in soccer?

I think she's done some work.

I don't know if she's done the most work.

I think her work is recognizable.

And sure, you know, I said that she does deserve her flowers, you know, but when you compare it to men, she's had to have done that.

She had to speak out against her oppression.

She had to have spoke out against pay equity.

Right.

So it's not about sensitivity.

It's about what you're experiencing.

And for a very long time, the women's team experienced this gap of pay equity in the in the World Cup.

So, yes, they did have to take it up.

But I go back to that It's not for only women to take this up like everybody has to take this up.

Thank you so much, Treisha Hylton Thank you.

This has been so enlightening.

And please keep up your great work.

That's it for this edition of To the Contrary.

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