Why The Women Always Win

By | January 28, 2015

You can’t play FIFA as Abby Wambach.

It seems a little silly that the game would have only male players. Certainly internationally, men’s soccer is significantly more popular than women’s. However, within the United States it seems absurd that women’s soccer wouldn’t be more popular. With 5 Olympic Gold Medals and 2 World Cup Championships under their belts, the US Women’s National Soccer Team blows their male counterparts out of the water. The United States has been in the top four teams of every Women’s World Cup since its inception in 1991, and their domination on an international scale shows no signs of stopping. Naturally, I wondered why.

Why is our women’s national team so strong when women’s soccer receives little to no attention within the US? According to the Boston Globe, “professional” women’s soccer players in the US have salaries ranging from $6,000-$30,000 annually. As a result, most players can’t afford to quit their day jobs. This salary cap is necessary because, with so few endorsements coming in, professional leagues are being forced into bankruptcy. How could such a poor professional foundation funnel into an internationally successful program? The answer once suggested to me by a Duke women’s soccer player seems simple enough:

It’s because in the US, women are allowed to be professionals. They’re allowed to live on their own, have careers, and exist independently from their husbands. That is not a right granted to many women internationally, so it follows naturally that those countries would not have well-supported women’s soccer teams, while the United States gives its female players their due. This theory continues to hold water after further review of World Cup Winners. The American women are joined by women from Germany, Sweden, and Norway, all of whom had nationally passed women’s suffrage acts by the early 1920s. Reviewing the women’s teams from the World Cup knockout stages over the last decade makes it clear that the majority of the teams who qualify come from similar, Western European, progressive nations who have been making strides in the feminist movement for periods of time comparable to the US. Many countries which are not similarly progressive are weeded out as the tournament enters the quarter finals. While certainly this explanation is not perfect, it seems to give some idea of why the US women tend to have a leg up on the international competition while the US men certainly do not.

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