"In 2017 Lewes Football Club, where I am a director, became the first - and still the only - professional or semi-professional club in the country to resource its women's and men's teams equally. Since then, and thanks to the Football Association's central grants and commercial revenue shares, our women's team has at times received a greater level of support - matching their higher league position. In other words, moving from Equality FC to a position of equity."
"For a men's club, a win in the second round of the FA Cup is worth 79,500. For the women it is just 8,000 - a 71,500 difference. In the first round the difference is 41,750, while in the third round it is 86,500. Same game, same rules, same competition, same knockout format, same governing body - but a different value placed on the players."
"Let's park the usual excuses - "commercial reality", "revenue difference", "it's complicated". No, it's not. The FA decides the prize fund for both competitions. It could easily make them equal tomorrow - it just needs to want to do it. It is simply too easy and lazy to dismiss the call for equality, as some people do, by pointing to crowd sizes and broadcast revenues."
Lewes Football Club equalised resourcing between its women's and men's teams in 2017 and has sometimes funded the women's side more due to higher league position and FA grants. A campaign for equal FA Cup prize money has run since 2019. Prize disparities are substantial: second-round men's wins pay £79,500 versus £8,000 for women; first- and third-round gaps are also large. The FA sets the prize fund and could equalise payouts immediately. Arguments about attendance and TV revenue do not affect FA-controlled prize allocations, and gate receipts are not taken by the FA.
Read at www.bbc.com
Unable to calculate read time
Collection
[
|
...
]