Last night the Australian women's soccer team, the Matildas, won 2-1 over Norway at the Women's World Cup. At the same time, Australia's netball Diamonds won 97-20 over Sri Lanka. These are just a couple of the women teams and athletes that are finding success.
The Matildas have taken over as Australia's better soccer team. They won the Asian Cup and are now into the Quarter-finals in the world cup. The equivalent mens team lost the Asian Cup final to Japan 1-0 and didn't make it past the group stage of the World Cup.
And yet Matildas captain Melissa Barbieri doesn't earn enough to pay a mortgage. She works part time as a nurse in a primary school. Barbieri gets paid around $32,000 a year to play for the Matildas. Despite leading one of the more successful sporting teams in Australia, she does not enjoy the luxury of the payment that many of Australia's elite athletes enjoy.
This is the same with many other female athletes. If you compared what the captain of the (consistently successful) Australian Netball Diamond and the captain of the (recently unsuccessful) Australian Mens Cricket Team, the difference would definitely favour cricket. This isn't even taking into account the Womens Cricket Team or the Mens Netball Team (which is one of the few mens teams that has lower funding than their women counterparts).
It's a tad disappointing that some of Australia's best athletes are underpaid and forced to work second jobs to pay the bills. At the same time as their male equivalents are overpaid and under-performing. In my eyes, this hardly seems fair.
Mostly, I'd put it down to the fact that all through history, men have been the ones doing the sport. If we look back, there aren't a whole lot of female gladiators. Nor were there a lot of female jousters or nights. It got to the point, when sport became popular, it was the men that mostly played.
I have hope though. It wasn't that long ago that male athletes worked normal jobs like everyone else and they trained/played in their spare time.
One day women will earn the same as men. Not just on the sporting field but in all fields. That day will be a great day.
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