OPINION: FIFA must give equal pay for equal play

(Chris Leipelt/Unsplash)

By Visalaakshi Annamalai

In December 2022, the United States Senate unanimously passed landmark legislation to ensure that all athletes representing the United States on the global stage will receive equal pay and benefits regardless of gender. The Act gained popularity after the world-champion U.S. Women’s National Soccer Team sued for equal pay and settled the suit in May 2022. Women in sports across the world have similarly proven that the battle for equal pay can be won – and now it is time for global leagues like FIFA to step up.

The FIFA Women’s World Cup tournament prize money is only 7.5% of the Men’s World Cup prize money. Women’s national teams get paid significantly less than men for the same work. This pay inequality is outrageous when FIFA has over $4 billion in reserves and is targeting $11 billion in revenue.

As partners and sponsors gain publicity through the Women’s World Cup, it is also a chance for them to reflect and break their silence on FIFA’s position on pay parity between men and women players.

FIFA has set aside $30 million in total prize money for the upcoming Women’s World Cup, while the men’s pool totaled $400 million in 2018. In addition to this, the men’s team receives $48 million in preparation costs, and $209 million goes to clubs that release players for the tournament. In contrast, the women's teams receive only $11.5 million for preparation and $8.4 million in club compensation. While FIFA attributes this pay gap to the differences in revenues generated, FIFA does not fully disclose that revenue for substantiation.

FIFA contributes to uncertainty in the world of business and human rights, raising key questions about corporate social responsibility.

Partners such as Visa, Australia’s Commonwealth Bank, and Xero have their own equal pay policies, ensuring men and women earn the same pay for the same work. However, as part of their corporate social responsibility, they have not contributed to supporting actual women and girls in the game. They have not taken any action to use their leverage on the crisis of women’s equal prize money and equal pay for equal work at the Women’s World Cup.

FIFA has recently adopted an extensive human rights framework that includes gender equality (and thus equal pay). FIFA’s human rights risk assessment for the 2023 Women’s World Cup identifies “gender and sex discrimination through lack of pay parity” as a risk to athletes’ rights. Despite the strong language, there has been no action to further pay parity. FIFA continues to be an outlier in women’s rights to equal pay, safety, and treatment.

Commercial partnerships with FIFA, according to the United Nations Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights (UN Guiding Principles), imply that partners and sponsors are linked to violating the human rights of equality and non-discrimination on gender grounds. The difference in pay is a quantifiable indicator of gender inequality, and it appears that FIFA has dismissed it, despite the glaring figures supporting the real and clear inequality between male and female players.

The UN Guiding Principles stipulate that all businesses are expected to conduct due diligence exercises to identify human rights risks linked to their business activities and to take adequate measures for prevention, mitigation, and, where appropriate, remediation. When a business cannot directly address the issue, they are expected to use their leverage to seek to end and remediate the rights violation. Therefore, partners and sponsors have a clear responsibility to use their influence to call on FIFA to adopt an equal pay policy and bridge the pay parity between male and female players. This will also allow FIFA to influence member associations to bring about change at the global level, taking us towards a more equal world for future generations.

FIFA’s annual reports show that, collectively, the World Cup partners and sponsors provide the vast majority of the marketing revenue that FIFA will generate in the upcoming Women’s World Cup. Partners and sponsors are integral to FIFA’s business operations and benefit through the publicity and revenue that come at the cost of rights violations committed during the World Cup. This should be of great concern to the sponsors and partners of FIFA. If they act and use their position as leverage to influence FIFA to adopt an equal pay policy, they will be reinforcing their commitment to pay parity globally.

Partners and Sponsors must move beyond rhetoric to see the reality of unequal pay in women’s sport. They must use their leverage to reform it and live up to their claimed values. Almost 75 years since the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR), the world of sports should no longer remain an unequal place for women.

Visalaakshi Annamalai (MPA ‘24) is a human mobility and development specialist. She is Communications Director of The Morningside Post.

To respond to this op-ed, or to submit your own, contact morningsidepost@columbia.edu.