If he
doesn’t want to compare, I will. According to FIFA ranking, Vietnam male
football currently ranks fourth in Southeast Asia with three times winning the SEA
Games - the biggest league Southeast Asia, while its counterpart occupies first place with seven gold medals in the
SEA Games. Incredibly, the national female team “qualified for their first-ever
FIFA Women's World Cup” (3) in 2023 – the great unprecedented result that the
male team has not ever achieved until now.
And you
will be surprised (in my case, furious) by the benefit the girls get before,
during, and after what they have done. In the meeting celebrating the
accomplishment of the national female team in 2022, Prime Minister Pham Minh
Chinh said: “The second aspect I want to mention is that when choosing football
as the career, they [female players] have to face hardship when their salary is
low, not even enough for basic needs. The basic salary is about VND
5,000,000/month [$213], sometimes even less. Therefore, many of them have had
to work extra jobs to make a living such as online sales, farming...” (4). At
the same time, the salary of ordinary male players varies from VND 10,000,000
($426) to VND 15,000,000 ($638) (5) – 2 to 3 times higher than female players. Clearly, better pay for the exactly same job. Moreover, famous male players can earn
hundreds of millions of VND, even billions with advertisement contracts,
participating in events… (6). I tried to find some information about those
kinds of things with female players, but I found nothing. It takes no effort to
see how bad society treats female football no matter how good it is, which
partly leads to the privilege of male football nowadays in Vietnam.
Photo: Hong Nam
Anh Do
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(1) Vietnamese use the word “football” to indicate “soccer”. I will use “football” term in in whole article.
(2) https://soha.vn/the-thao/vff-xac-nhan-bong-da-nam-duoc-uu-ai-hon-bong-da-nu-20140521184558642.htm
(5) https://thanhnien.vn/cau-thu-v-league-khong-chi-song-dua-vao-luong-1851343285.htm
(6) https://cand.com.vn/giai-tri-the-thao/Cau-thu-Viet-Nam-va-chuyen-kiem-tien-ngoai-bong-da-i523514/
I think your article highlights another example of how women’s sports is still highly underappreciated even by an institution whose job is to support them. I know there are many people who think that inequal pay in women’s sport has to do with the amount of money being brought in by the sports itself, such as through ticket sales, advertisements, ratings, viewers, etc. However, it is important to note that the reason women’s sports do not generate as much revenue can be because it has never been promoted in the same way that men’s sports is. Cheryl Cooky (2022), a Purdue University Professor argued that men’s sports seem more exciting because they have higher quality of coverage and commentary. When fewer cameras, instant replays, and angles are used, women’s games will appear to be slower and less interesting. Another study led by Dr. Daryl Rosenbaum, can be used to challenge the bias of women’s sports. He wrote that men fake injuries twice as often as women in sports. This data sort of proves that men’s sports can be slower with all the delays that they caused by laying on the ground to look like they were injured.
ReplyDeleteOur perception of women’s sports is heavily influenced by the media not only in the ways Cooky (2022) has addressed, but also in the ridiculous ways that our women athletes have been treated by the industry. Perhaps, we do not take women’s sports seriously because our media constantly belittle them. For instance, this video titled If Male Athletes Were Asked Questions Aimed at Female Athletes (accessible at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3aT32m6UH7E) can put so much light into how absurd our media has treated our female athletes. To make matter worse, sports is actually designed around the physiology of male bodies. Women are further disadvantaged by being expected to perform in a way that is not in line with how their bodies develop (Fleshmen, 2023).
Reference:
Fleshmen, L. 2023. Sports Were Never Designed Around the Female Body. Time. https://time.com/6261404/sports-female-body-inclusivity/
How Does The Media Affect Society’s Perceptions Of Women’s Sports In The Modern Era? (2022, February 17). Edubirdie. Retrieved September 19, 2023, from https://edubirdie.com/examples/how-does-the-media-affect-societys-perceptions-of-womens-sports-in-the-modern-era/
Daryl A. Rosenbaum, Ravi R. Sanghani, Travis Woolen & Stephen W. Davis. 2011. Estimation of Injury Simulation in International Women’s Football, Research in Sports Medicine, 19:3, 162-169. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/15438627.2011.556523
Thank you for this post. You have done well to highlight a burning issue in the field of sports. As a committed soccer fan, I have been following the issue closely, and I must admit that the debate is skewed to the wrong end. Many people have defended the high wages men receive compared to their female counterparts by saying that male sports are better. I am happy that you have brought up the case of Vietnam, which has shown that even where women perform better than their male counterparts, they still get less attention and pay.
ReplyDeleteBesides, I do not think the issue is about one sport being better than the other. That would be a very unfair assessment. There are no parameters to judge between the two, as they are different. But once one team is performing well, they should be given the deserving remuneration. Conversely, for me, it’s more about creating equality and access to opportunities for both males and females, knowing fully well that in many parts of the world, women are stopped from participating in sports for no justifiable reasons. Equal pay and opportunities can be very handy in encouraging everyone to fulfill their dreams of joining sports.
As a person who does not regularly watch football, this was a very interesting topic but I learned a lot from reading your post. I really like how you started the post with a quote from a person of "authority" in Vietnam saying that men's football is the national image, in order to set the scene for the rest of the post. I knew about this similarity in pay inequality in women's vs. men's sports in the US, and it was not shocking to learn that pay inequality is a global issue, since women are often devalued when compared to men. I was shocked to learn that most of the women on Vietnam's national team do not make enough money to support their basic needs and have to get other jobs on the side, even though this year they qualified for their first ever FIFA World Cup! Thank you for writing this post, very informative!
ReplyDeleteWow, this article has made me think about a significant issue in Vietnamese football that I was unaware of. The discrepancy in treatment between male and female athletes is quite upsetting. Equally as important as the male team's exploits should be the female team's successes, such as their first FIFA Women's World Cup qualification. It's discouraging to learn that female athletes make much less than male athletes for doing the same work and that they have less opportunity to land lucrative ad contracts. This serves as a stark reminder of the privilege that men play football in Vietnam, and it is an issue that needs to be resolved in order to advance gender equality in the sport.
ReplyDelete