Separate, equal or different? 

Recently, the Dutch female national football team played a male youth team from a Dutch amateur club in preparation for the World Cup. The Dutch national football association decided not to broadcast the game as they were afraid it would harm the reputation of women’s football. They only just won, but this is no shame as most agree that it makes no sense to compare male and female professional football. They are different and should be valued equally, but separately. 

Yet, this stance does not seem to hold when financial interests come to play. Indeed, there has been much debate about the differences in wages between the men’s and women’s first national teams. Still, many are opposed to (significantly more) equal wages. Since 2022, both the male and female players who compete of the Dutch national teams receive an equal payment for each game played. Nevertheless, this will not be the case for many other sports, nor for how much football clubs pay men and women.

The ratings argument and its weaknesses 

Wage is not all that matters for recognition, but it is an important way to recognize others directly and symbolically. It can also be said that wage is just one of many means to esteem and incentivize players. Prizes, adoration, fame and the honor of representing one’s country are other means to appreciation, respect and acknowledgement. Thus, when a market-based wage is distribution is established, we cannot understand this to be fair by default. Here we neglect that both teams are part of a state institution over which we hold the power to decide how it is run. We can thus say that both teams should earn the same merely because we value both equally, even if one team is more profitable. Hence, we can regard the wage distribution of both teams as an opportunity to establish or challenge our principles of fairness.

One of the main arguments justifying unequal pay can be called the ‘ratings argument’: as the men’s team is viewed significantly more, they produce significantly more revenues and deserve more income. It is not that their desert is based on the fact that they are more popular or better, but that they are more vital to the operation and its earnings. Just like a CEO’s contribution is perceivably most important to the company, their wage is the highest. Therefore, the general tenet of the ‘ratings argument’ is intuitively plausible. Yet, some of its premises are questionable. 

Men are better and therefore more profitable. In fact, men’s football constitutes a bigger industry because of the higher sponsorships, stadiums, awareness of the players abilities and traits, coverage etc. It is hard to pinpoint exactly where the men’s team’s superior football quality stands between those other factors, and thus, to what extent they are responsible for the higher profits. On a less analytical note, in many sports, especially those who are less technical than football, absolute skill and therefore the difference in level of skill is not all that matters for the joy of watching. 

Whoever is a better football player deserves more income. This sounds plausible, but it would be naïve to suppose that the meritocracy is flawless. Skill is driven out in a cultural context because one’s personal background, whether that is nationality, class, place of birth, race, sex etc., is a dominating factor. Although these traits matter for one’s predicted level of skill, they are acquired arbitrarily. Moreover, is skill all that matters? What about effort, fair play or professional attitude? You would expect that skill is primarily measured by prizes. Yet many women earn less, despite having won more. The point being, there is no accurate measure of skill as to fairly distribute wages accordingly. 

But above all, why are men better football players than women anyway? What physical or mental quality is unique to only one sex and therefore makes them superior per definition. Instead, perhaps the difference is cultural. When we claim that men are better football players, they make an appeal to something inherent about men which gives them symbolic ownership over the sport. But what can this be? Which muscle, bone, attitude or trait? Even if men are taller or faster on average, elite level sports are not about averages; they are about exceptions. For the same reason, there are sports where women have excelled over men. 

Of course, there are several numerical occurrences which can support the claim that men are currently better players in some way. However, these occurrences do not justify the essentialist assertion for the male sex to implicitly lay claim to football. Moreover, as some female players are better than some male players, we can imagine a world where women would dominate football. The fact that women are ‘generally’ worse players, is similar to why some men are worse players than other men, except that they are not disadvantaged by virtue of the arbitrary quality of their sex. 

Nobody owns football

The previous insight pinpoints the difference between not having the moral pressure to change the wage distribution on the one hand, but not having any good reasons not to change it on the other hand. Founding a wage distribution on an idea of essence, supported by the current reality, makes less sense than doing so on a more idealistic idea of fairness, rooted in the logic of cultural relevance. The underlying danger of attributing an idea of essence is implicitly (or secretly) justifying the status quo on normatively empty grounds. In the philosophical study of recognition, we learn the danger of essentializing, whether it is conservative or progressive about fairness. It closes our eyes to how society is normatively constructed. 

Whether you consider male and female (and more?) elite sports as separates or not, they should be treated as equals. Although it is hard to imagine an (more) equal pay, there is no convincing practical or moral barrier. The case shows a confused use of the concept of equality, a lack of moral grammar and the potential for political philosophy to clarify such matters.