The World Cup prize money gender gap (and four other stories)
Five reads on gender (in)equality to end your week.
Something has been bothering me this week. For those not familiar with the British parliamentary system, some background: Alongside the House of Commons, the UK has an unelected second chamber, the House of Lords. The very existence of this can be controversial, as can the fact that membership of the Lords can be bestowed on political allies by political leaders. One of the most controversial appointments on Boris Johnson’s resignation honours list is a 30-year-old woman called Charlotte Owen. The former special political advisor to the former PM is the youngest-ever life peer and now the youngest member of the Lords. The Twitterati (now X-erati?) has been rife with speculation at her appointment. What must she have done for Johnson to make her a peer?
There is something uncomfortable about seeing the images of this women shared alongside the snark and subtext. Do I detect a hint of misogyny in the reaction to her peerage? Take this Observer column, titled “The Secret Diary of Charlotte Owen, aged 30¼: ‘I’m a Barbie girl, and a baroness’” — Owen is blonde, by the way — as an example. Would people respond in such a way to a young male peer? We have a bit of a comparison in the new Labour MP Keir Mather who, at 25, is now the youngest parliamentarian in the Commons. There has been some incredulity at his win, though of course the difference is that he did actually campaign for the job, whereas Owen was awarded the privilege. It’s not Owen that’s the problem though, it’s the system itself. And the tone of the reaction says a lot about those doing the reacting, doesn’t it?
And now to the reads…
1) The World Cup prize money gender gap
The Women’s World Cup is underway with what seems like far less attention and fanfare than the Euros last year — or is that just me? In any case, according to BBC Business reporter Katie Silver, this year’s tournament could be:
.. a watershed moment in the fight for equal pay in women's football globally.
From Nigeria to the UK, South Africa and Canada, there have been stand-offs between multiple teams and their football associations. The fights range from bonuses to basic equal pay. Some teams have even been threatening to boycott matches, take their football associations to their national parliaments — or even not get on the plane.
For instance, before the games began on 20 July, the Australian professional players union posted a video featuring members of Australia’s national women’s team pointing out that the prize money for the Women’s World Cup is far less than for the men’s World Cup. As per the BBC:
The total prize pot for the Women's World Cup…is $110m (£84.1m), a 300% increase from the 2019 tournament, but significantly lower than the $440m (£336.4m) pot for the men in Qatar last year.
Australia’s national team, known as the Matildas, went on strike in 2015 over equal pay, and in 2019 they “exercised their collective bargaining rights in an agreement ….which gave them the same minimum percentage of tournament prize money as the nation's men's team,” the BBC reports. In the video, the Matildas pointed out that not all professional women players have collective bargaining rights:
Sydney FC's Cortnee Vine added in the video: "Our sisters in the A-League are still pushing to make football a full-time career, so they don't have to work part-time jobs like we had to."
In March, Fifa’s president, Gianni Infantino said “we are on that journey” to equal prize money. Apparently the football governing body wants the 2026 and 2027 World Cups to have the same prize pots.
Also, this is the first Women’s World Cup where a footballer has played wearing a hijab. Fifa has only allowed players to wear head coverings for religious reasons since 2014.
2) Have you met my AI girlfriend?
If you were looking for a new AI-related problem to worry about, you’re in luck. In the Guardian, Josh Taylor asks whether AI girlfriend apps, which enable users to create a perfect though fake partner, could create a new generation of incels, feeding beliefs around “gender-based control and violence”:
“Control it all the way you want to,” reads the slogan for AI girlfriend app Eva AI. “Connect with a virtual AI partner who listens, responds, and appreciates you.”
The experts he speaks to seem concerned. Here’s one:
“Creating a perfect partner that you control and meets your every need is really frightening,” said Tara Hunter, the acting CEO for Full Stop Australia, which supports victims of domestic or family violence. “Given what we know already that the drivers of gender-based violence are those ingrained cultural beliefs that men can control women, that is really problematic.”
On Dazed, Serena Smith has the following to say:
None of this is real, obviously, and there’s a small part of me that wants to believe maybe this is all OK – perhaps this is a good, safe, contained outlet for lonely men to explore and satisfy their desires where no one gets hurt? But equally, maybe ‘having an outlet’ isn’t the answer when men are... verbally abusing their virtual girlfriends? Maybe the answer lies in figuring out why men want to be mean to women in the first place?
P.s. The Times has interviewed the extremism researcher Julia Ebner, who spends much of her time posing as an incel on the internet.
3) How Israel’s current chaos will affect women
The Israeli government — the most right-wing and religious in the country’s history — continues its efforts to upend any semblance of democracy in the state with its judicial overhaul. The government recently managed to pass key legislation, which weakens the power of the judiciary and makes it easier for the government to do what it likes. There have been mass protests against these reforms for more than six months now. Earlier this year, before the judicial reform push began, I wrote about why this government could be bad news for women’s rights in Israel. In the Israeli daily Haaretz, Hamutal Gouri, explains what’s at stake for women, what’s happened so far, and how women lawmakers are helping to roll back rights. She writes:
In recent weeks and months, as the country is gripped in the crisis of [Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s] government’s plan for a judicial coup, those very women ministers have proven themselves to be willing supporters of the plan even though it threatens to roll back decades of hard-won achievements by women’s groups.
4) Labour clarifies its position on trans and sex-based rights
The British obsession with the so-called trans rights debate continues apace. As a general election hovers on the horizon, Prime Minister Rishi Sunak reportedly plans to exploit divisive issues such as transgender rights to win votes. Meanwhile, following a meeting of the Labour Party’s national policy forum, Annaliese Dodds, shadow secretary of state for women and equalities, clarified the party’s position on this issue while also having a dig at the Conservatives for planning to exploit it. She writes:
Arguments about the boundaries between sex and gender-based rights now rank among the fiercest in politics. Both sides argue – rightly – that they advocate for some of the most vulnerable people in our society. This should encourage a degree of care from responsible politicians. Responsible politicians would understand that this isn’t a debate to exploit, it’s people’s lives. Who they are and who, all too frequently, they suffer violence for being. Responsible politicians would put that well beyond electoral opportunism. But this is a different and desperate Tory party.
So what does Labour’s policy look like now? The party says it will modernise the 2004 Gender Recognition Act, but that it will retain the requirement of a medical diagnosis of gender dysphoria in order to legally change gender. I.e. Labour will not move to gender self-ID, though the party says it will change the process for obtaining a gender recognition certificate so that it is less intrusive and bureaucratic. And on the protection of single sex spaces under the Equality Act:
We need to recognise that sex and gender are different – as the Equality Act does. We will make sure that nothing in our modernised gender recognition process would override the single-sex exemptions in the Equality Act. Put simply, this means that there will always be places where it is reasonable for biological women only to have access. Labour will defend those spaces, providing legal clarity for the providers of single-sex services.
The dynamics and politics of this so-called debate in the UK continue to fascinate. Whereas in the US, for instance, divisions over trans rights are seen as being split on liberal/conservative lines, here there is far more overlap between right and left. In the Washington Post, Kelsy Burke outlines those dynamics in the US in a piece arguing that most feminists support trans rights, including certain policies seen as controversial.
5) The Barbie backlash
I am watching the Barbie movie this evening (yes!), so have mostly been avoiding reading anything about it in the meantime. But I have been looking out for coverage of the backlash to the film. For instance, Elon Musk reportedly finds all those references to the patriarchy grating.
In New Lines magazine, Rasha Al Aqeedi wrote about the reaction to the film on the manosphere before it had even been released:
If there is any takeaway from grown men fuming over a film about a doll, it is this: The manosphere started with the aim to help men overcome their insecurities in dating and, well, life in general — something anyone can relate to. But it has devolved into a network of angry and petty men, many of them professional adults with degrees, who publicly objectify and hate on women while expressing an unrequited desire for them. Defending masculinity has made the manosphere followers so thin-skinned that a bubblegum aesthetic film and its lead actor is triggering and it ignites another meaningless (not to mention ridiculous) culture war.
Bonus: Sinead O’Connor’s 2013 open letter warning Miley Cyrus she was being “pimped” by the music industry |
on “cougar puberty”, the menopause term you will want to unhear | The on the hidden history of Ayah womenThank you for reading, and see you next week.