The Lagunera Grecia Ruiz is the living example of a soccer talent frustrated by the abysmal disparities in remuneration between professional players, because while she could only be paid six thousand 500 pesos a month at the professional level, a man, on average, earn 600 thousand pesos (or more) in the same period.
The calendar marks March 19, 2018, in the Santos Modelo Territory, the Matchday 11 match of the Liga MX Femenil will be played between Las Guerreras and Las Esmeraldas de León. Although the green bellies prevail first, the locals turn it around and La Laguna midfielder Grecia Ruiz, apart from making the score that ends the match, scores the best goal of the day, a postcard that she has framed in her memories.
I did not experience that match firsthand, but I resurrect the moment of the score by digging through the archives of this newspaper where I came across the image of the celebration: Grecia screams with open chest, her arms transform into wings and she seems to have reached heaven.
And I think: Greece did manage to border on glory because, although for a short time, the young woman lived the dream of many Laguneras (and Mexicans): playing soccer at a professional level. Years ago I myself witnessed its magic; Since I met her, she seemed to me to be a remarkable soccer player. Therefore, when the women’s professional soccer league became official, I was not surprised that she was one of the first called up by the local team. What I did not imagine was that her soccer career was frustrated just two years after starting up. Because? She herself tells it to this newspaper…
WOMEN LIVE NOT ONLY FROM FOOTBALL
The Liga MX Femenil (and for sponsorship reasons Liga MX BBVA Femenil) was founded just seven years ago, on December 5, 2016.
Before there was no professional soccer league for women in Mexico. Although this is a great advance for women’s sports, to date Mexican soccer players face several challenges, low salaries, for example.
Grecia Ruiz, as already written, was called up from the first moment, and almost without thinking she accepted to be part of the corpus of players of the Santos Laguna women’s first team. Ruiz was not a rookie, since she was little she adhered to the soccer environment, and before being part of the main team she had already played in a squad at a semi-professional level.
Her dream was to be part of the Women’s National Team, because she saw the idea of there being an exclusive league for them as very far away. However, at 23 years old she stopped seeing soccer as a sport and took it on as a job.
“Now professionally I can say that I respect what I was able to experience in training and in that whole environment. Yes, it is something different from how one lives as an amateur, because although I never thought about it, I thank God because I have the joy of saying that I fulfilled that dream.”he shared.
During the games she played with the albiverde jacket, this midfielder showed great ball handling and skill inside the rectangle, but soon she also showed her discontent, because even though, she said, in the first tournament she was one of “the best paid girls.” ”, he received a salary of 3,500 pesos per month, that is, almost 117 per day; an amount that would currently be well below the minimum wage, which consists of 248.93 pesos per day.
With that amount the soccer player had to dribble the expenses of food, transportation, housing, among other things, because her contract stipulated that her earnings would be limited only to the aforementioned salary, that is, she would not have access to extra bonuses or meals. specials, neither to the clubhouse, nor to other benefits that, it is well known, male soccer players do receive.
Although she tried, the young woman could not live on soccer alone, and chose to help a friend in her gorditas restaurant. In the mornings she attended the business, and in the afternoons she assisted the goals in training.
“In the third tournament, girls came (to the team) who were paid up to seven thousand pesos a month or something like that, I can’t guarantee that 100 percent, but there were rumors, because Santos said that the league (MX Femenil) had a clause that stipulated that they could not pay more because it was a tournament that was just beginning. Currently, the truth is I don’t know what the salary is, but I think it should be high so that women can truly live only from soccer.”.
For the fourth league tournament, the home team decided to release her, but due to her high competitiveness she managed to attract the attention of the UNAM Pumas, a squad that improved her salary, but not the conditions.
The lagoon signed contract with the golden torso for the 2019 Clausura Tournament and moved to CDMX. “There they paid me six thousand 500 pesos a month, even so it was very little to live in Mexico, they didn’t give me a clubhouse or anything, I had to pay everything on my own.”
Considering that the total cost of living alone in Mexico City can range between 14,500 and 34,000 pesos per month, what was the hope that your soccer career would prosper?
Grecia Ruiz soon knew the answer and resigned from Pumas halfway through the tournament.
“That’s where my professional career in the women’s league ended.”.
As soon as he returned home, he received an offer from Santos Laguna that he also had to reject, because at that time he already had a job where he earned more than being a midfielder.
Now the former professional soccer player runs a snack and snow business in Torreón. She says that with that activity she found better economic stability. Although she hardly plays anymore, her memory permeates that match against the green bellies in which she gave her team and the fans an epic goal, which for her, perhaps, represents her consecration.
WHEN TALENT IS NOT PAID
Grecia Ruiz’s dream is not the only one that was broken. Over the course of seven years, there have been several players who decided to quit for the same reason as her.
For example, Berenice Muñoz, whose name went down in history for being the first scorer in the Liga MX Femenil, announced her retirement in 2022. Although she proved to be a profitable soccer player, the most she could get a club to pay her It was eight thousand pesos a month and that was Querétaro. At that time, Ella Muñoz declared to various media outlets that her intention was not to retire from soccer, but, she expressed, there came a time when it became unsustainable for her. Currently she has also shown her desire to rejoin a team because she still longs to establish herself as a soccer player.
“We can’t live off this. I earned four thousand a month, but there are colleagues who earn less than that, it is impossible to survive on two thousand pesos a month, that is why they force me to make this decision, I want to get to a place where they value my time and my work.“, was one of the most forceful messages that Pulido launched during the audiovisual material.
The three previous cases demonstrate in a micro way a macro problem: the gender pay gap. One fact is that in Mexico, according to the Mexican Institute for Competitiveness (IMCO), the gender wage gap is 16 percent.
In soccer, for example, a man earns, on average, 183 times more than a woman.
Due to the discontent of the soccer players, and the obvious lack of will to provide them with a decent salary and improve their conditions so that they could dedicate themselves exclusively to playing soccer, several reactions were generated, one of them was that the Federal Economic Competition Commission (Cofese) began an investigation in 2018.
As a result of the above, in 2021 Cofese sanctioned 17 Liga MX clubs, the Mexican Soccer Federation and eight individuals for colluding in the football player transfer market. The fines imposed totaled 177.6 million pesos.
According to information of the same commission, one of the sanctioned behaviors consisted of an agreement to set a maximum ceiling on the salaries of the players, an action that the former soccer player Grecia Ruiz confirmed to El Siglo de Torreón, and that eliminated competition between clubs to hire them with a better remuneration and deepened the gender pay gap.
“Since the creation of the Liga MX Femenil in 2016, various clubs agreed to establish a salary cap for these athletes based on three categories: one, those over 23 years of age would earn a maximum of 2 thousand pesos; two, those under 23 years of age, 500 pesos plus a course for their personal training and three, the players in the U-17 category would have no income, but could have help with transportation, studies and food.“, Cofese points out in a bulletin published in September 2021.
This agreement was replaced by another in the 2018-2019 season, and through a statement the Liga MX informed the clubs that the maximum limit would be 15 thousand pesos and only four of its players could earn above that amount, in addition to the support in kind they could not exceed 50 thousand pesos per tournament.
Furthermore you can read that: “The practice, which lasted from November 2016 to May 2019, constituted a collusive agreement between the clubs that had the object and effect of manipulating prices (in this case the salaries of the players) and preventing the clubs from competing for their hiring through better salaries, which not only had a negative impact on their income, but also had the consequence of widening the gender pay gap”.
It is worth mentioning that the local team, Santos Laguna, was included in the IO-002-2018 file, which, like the other 16 squads, was investigated for the possible commission of absolute monopolistic practices in the market for the signing of professional soccer players in the territory. national.
THEY SEEK EQUAL PAY IN MEXICAN FOOTBALL
Another of the reactions that unfolded regarding the salaries of the players was that on March 5 of this year the Chamber of Senators of Mexico unanimously approved a reform to the Federal Labor Law (LFT) that establishes equal salaries between men. and women soccer players, among other sports; This modification would force sports clubs to have an equal base salary for athletes regardless of gender.
The establishment of a base salary, it was learned, comes accompanied by other rights such as access to social security and being able to have private medical services.
The opinion was sent to the Chamber of Deputies for its endorsement. If approved, the Ministry of Labor and Social Welfare (STPS) will have a period of 180 days to publish the base salary that athletes must receive.
If we think that Sergio Canales, current Rayados player, is the highest paid soccer player in Mexico, earning five million dollars a year, the question is: Is it possible for a woman to earn that amount?
To find out the position of Santos Laguna Femenil regarding the reform, or in general on the topic developed above, we sought to have contact with some authority of the institution through the communication department and although, in addition, we went to the facilities and left a request for an interview (which was signed upon receipt), at the time of going to press this report no response was obtained.
CAN WOMEN FOOTBALL PLAYERS MAKE MILLIONS?
According to Luis Fernando Sandoval Flores, press and basic forces coordinator of Mazatlán Femenil, who has also closely followed the Liga MX Femenil, the Senate reform aims to stipulate a decent base salary so that women can dedicate themselves exclusively to play soccer, not so that they can reach a million-dollar salary like Canales’.
In that sense, Sandoval Flores mentioned that currently the American Katty Martínez could be the highest paid Mexican soccer player, earning approximately 150 thousand pesos per month. An amount that is nothing close to what the Rayados player earns, but that does exceed the low salaries received by the majority of the country’s players.
“Because when the league was created it had a salary cap of 3 to 6 thousand pesos per month. Afterwards it grew and today the average salary is between 8 and 10 thousand pesos per month”. However, he added, there are already female players, although few, who reach 100 thousand pesos a month.
A separate case is that of Jenni Hermoso, world champion with Spain in the 2023 World Cup, who although the amount of her salary is unknown, it is presumed that Tigres pays her one million dollars annually. As you can see, this is an extraordinary situation, and even so, it does not compare with the million-dollar amount that Sergio Canales reaches. And let’s not even talk about the amounts reached by stars like Cristiano Ronaldo, or Messi.
But…Why can’t women soccer players earn the same as men?
El Centro de Estudios Espinosa Yglesias (CEEY), which is dedicated to generating specialized research, in its text The salary and labor disparity in Mexican soccer by gender, explains that both managers and owners of Mexican soccer organizations have mentioned on multiple occasions that the reasons for these differences are not due to gender.
“The reasons that justify this inequality always seem to be market reasons: women’s football does not produce enough income to be able to provide a raise, a decent salary or benefits that allow women players to have access to a complete circle of well-being (education, health, food, transportation, security, among others.)“, reads the text.
This is also analyzed by sports specialist Gerardo Lozano, who commented for this report that from the point of view of duty, of course there must be equality in salaries because in both cases a sport is practiced at a professional level. However, he expressed, what is somehow undeniable is that if a soccer club generates a certain amount of money per year, it does so thanks to its men’s squad.
Because? “Because that’s how it has been handled historically. The women’s league hasn’t even existed for 10 years, and for that pay equality to be achieved, I believe that women’s soccer must go through the same process that men’s soccer went through.”he shared.
In that sense, he explained that the female version has to work on generating a very great interest from fans and brands, “so that they can later justify themselves and say, ‘we generate the same interest and the same market’ (as men ). But men’s soccer would have to do the same if the roles were changed,” mentioned the sports specialist.
On the other hand, although the Mazatlán Femenil press coordinator observes great progress in the sporting quality of the players in the league, he agrees with Lozano when he says that for the money to be reflected in the pockets of the soccer players, first, they have to fill stadiums, then attract sponsors and then make the fans consume more and more of their game and their products.
However, he himself testifies that the sporting growth of the Liga MX Femenil, each year, is 100 percent, so much so that more and more foreign soccer players want to be part of the Mexican teams, which injects added value to the circuit. national rose, which Luis Fernando Sandoval has no doubt is already within the five best leagues worldwide, and very soon, he said, it is very possible it will be placed within the three most important due to the potential it projects.
The numbers don’t lie: the Liga MX Femenil itself reported that the 2023 Apertura Tournament is so far the most watched in its history, registering a total attendance of 511,140 fans in the stadiums and a record audience in the second leg final. between Tigres and América by achieving 1.8 M rating and 3.9 M reach. Likewise, in the 2024 Clausura Tournament, 66 foreign soccer players were registered, representing 14.4 percent of all female soccer players in this league.
But…it is evident that Mexican women’s soccer has achieved significant growth in terms of audiences, public acceptance, and, above all, it has proven to be profitable in a short time. Why is there still a risk of the wage gap I stained the ball and more female soccer talents, like that of Grecia Ruiz from La Laguna, end up getting dirty?
#ball #dirty #salary #gap #dirtyes #womens #soccer
2024-04-10 16:56:27