Africa: Why isn’t FIFA red-carding Africa’s Soccer Bodies over women’s low wage?

By Promise Joshua:

With the Women’s World Cup launching this month, FIFA is still siding with corrupt national football federations over women players. Across Africa, wage theft for female players and rampant gender inequality continue to characterize the women’s game.

My national team, the Nigerian women—nicknamed the Super Falcons—are supposed to open the tournament playing host country Australia on July 20. But they are shockingly considering to boycott their first match after the squad were informed they won't be paid tournament match bonuses, an essential part of their income.

From Nigeria to South Africa, female players are paid significantly less than their male counterparts, and have their wages stolen. The Nigeria Football Federation (NFF) still owes several female players their $1,500 allowance from the 2022 Women's African Cup of Nations, a regional tournament. In South Africa, female players are paid one-tenth their male peers for the same 90 minutes of play.

Despite these violations of labor rights and non-discrimination rights, FIFA remains a spectator, sitting and watching as its associations violate women’s rights with impunity.

At the core of the human rights violations is the problem of unpaid wages. “Can you believe that we are still owed our bonuses?” exclaimed a female player of Nigeria’s Women’s National Football Team, three months after the 2022 WAFCON Championship, to  The Punch .

In the 2019 Women’s World Cup in France, each female Nigerian player was  only paid half of the approximately $5,300 owed from previous international fixtures. In 2016, following their eighth-time win of the WAFCON championship, the NFF also owed each female player $23,650 .

Meanwhile national football federations receive a vast inflow of revenue towards the running costs of their national teams. As a member association of FIFA, the NFF receives up to $1 million annually from the FIFA Forward Programme to fund operating costs, including costs for the national teams. In addition, the Programme  grants each member an extra contribution of up to $2 million specifically to cover the costs of projects to develop women’s football.

A discrepancy exists between the funding of women’s football and the shortage of funds for both training and salaries of female players. This discrepancy suggests national federations misappropriate the grants that FIFA distributes through them. Sahara Reporters stated that since the former NFF president Amaju Pinnick’s era began in Nigeria in 2004, “financial discrepancies, misappropriation,” and “diversion of money” have been “the order of the day in the operations of the NFF”.

Worsening this chronic problem of wage theft is the problem of gender inequality. South Africa's President Cyril Ramaphosa's call for pay parity   after the Women's National Team win at the WAFCON 2022 was a wake-up call to FIFA to rectify the problem of pay disparity in African football.