Stereotypes clouding the beautiful game

by Ollie Standen

For the past 21 years, football has been an integral part of my life. Throughout recent years the growth of women’s football has been tremendous, with more participation from grassroots to professional level. The coverage of women’s football has also grown, with major sponsorship deals such as Sky Sports, showing 118 matches of the Women’s Super League (or WSL). This improvement of sponsorship and financial backing leads to the question, why is there still such a gap between men’s football and women’s football?

Since the creation of the Barclays Premiere League (BPL: the men’s version of the WSL) in 1992, sponsorship and viewership are a constant flow for the game. The game of football has been plagued with stereotypes with it being deemed that women should not participate in the sport. There is a stigma that football should only be played by men with the regressive mindset that women should not play the sport. However, due to the fight for equality, with gender roles being less rooted in society, it has allowed for opportunities like women’s football to grow. This, in my opinion, has shown the progressive nature that society has adopted; however, there is still a massive gap between the salaries of men and women.

Ronaldo, who is the highest paid men’s footballer, earns a whopping $4.43m a week with the highest paid female being Bonmati, who earns around $1m annually when playing football. I think this is ludicrous that a female footballer gets paid less than $3m than that of a professional men’s football player, when they both play professionally, spending the same amount of hours within the day to train and provide entertainment to people within an intense environment. Which still shows the underlining census that football is a male dominated sport. This could deter the growth of women’s sport due to the gap in facilities, money and exposure; therefore, leading to less participation by female athletes within the sport conforming to old masculine stereotypes and aiding in the regressive views that clouds the sport.