Equal pay in international women’s football—reflections, challenges and potential solutions

Carrick, Sarah ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7244-8064 and Schwab, Brendan (2025) Equal pay in international women’s football—reflections, challenges and potential solutions. The International Sports Law Journal. ISSN 1567-7559

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Abstract

International women’s football has changed dramatically in the last five years. It is experiencing increased popularity and engagement, and greater revenues. However, professional women footballers have and continue to earn significantly less than their male counterparts and often endure far worse conditions. Pay inequality—the focus of this paper—continues despite FIFA having constitutionally ‘banned’ gender-based discrimination more than 20 years ago. In that time, five editions of the FIFA Women’s World Cup have been held, all of which patently discriminated against women players in breach of FIFA’s own statutes (2007, 2011, 2015, 2019 and 2023). For players such as Brazil’s Marta—who played in all five tournaments—this constitutes an extraordinary international career harmed by discrimination. FIFA equalised conditions in 2023, but not prize money. Prize money was not introduced until 2007, and when it was, only nominally. Despite being increased for 2023, it remained a fraction of the prize money pool for the men’s tournament. This paper will examine three potential avenues and the issues they may present in the pursuit of adequate remedies to resolve the pay gap. First, the problematic role of some collective bargaining agreements at national team level which have seen men accept reduced pay to deliver what purports to be ‘equal pay’, such as in Denmark, the Netherlands and the United States (US). Second, the role of player unions and collective action. Despite favourable laws in many jurisdictions and powerful examples of collective action in women’s football, player unions have, in the main, been reluctant to litigate. Last, it is beneficial to examine the continued inequality of prize money through the lens of transnational justice. FIFPRO, the world players’ union, issued a declaration of victory on equal pay by 2027, but there is still no binding agreement with FIFA. Accordingly, this paper will consider avenues to address the continued lack of accountability of FIFA to deliver equal prize money notwithstanding its statutory commitment to human rights and its longstanding prohibition of gender discrimination.