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The lack of pay equity and discrimination on wages based on gender in women’s sport has again been thrown into the spotlight.
Former Banyana Banyana star Portia Modise has bemoaned the stagnancy of women’s football in the country saying that those in charge of growing the sport lacked a passion for it.
Outspoken Modise lamented the pay gap between men and women saying “we still find players who work, have other jobs and they have to tell their bosses that they will miss work for four days, all to play and not be paid.”
Modise’s sentiments come on the back of a report by SkySports this week of how England’s women’s team had been treated differently to their male counterparts. The team had to fly out to the US for the SheBelieves Cup in premium economy class rather than on a chartered flight that the senior men’s and Under-21 teams use.
In 2014 Modise became the first African player to surpass the elusive 100-goal barrier in international football with her 99th and 100th goals in South Africa’s 5-1 victory over Algeria during a CAF African Women’s Championship.
She said: “In my opinion women’s football in the country is still in the same place it was when I was still a player, and that is not a good place to be.
“How can we say there is change in the game if we are still finding teams that travel for 52 hours to play for 90 minutes and have nothing to show for it? There is no money. There’s nothing.”
Read: Women’s football in SA still faces huge challenges
With the launch of the Safa National Women’s League last year, women’s football seemed to be heading in the right direction.
However, for Modise who retired in 2015, the introduction of the league had no impact on the state of the women’s game.
The former striker spoke candidly about the lack of progress in women’s football in the country and said: “Yes, we have people who were put in positions to grow the game for women but they are not passionate enough about women’s football to give their all to make it grow in our country.
“How exactly are we growing women’s football? Is it growing? Are we really putting in enough effort?
“We cannot pretend we have a good league when we can all see that we don’t have a good league,” Modise said.
She said up and coming players who should be benefitting from the sacrifices made by their predecessors, were worse off.
“I am passionate about women’s football but I think the federation exploited us as women in this sport,” she said. “It pains us to see that our sacrifices were worth nothing. Our sacrifices need to be worth something for the young players of today. How can players experience what I experienced even after I scored more than 100 goals for the national team?
Former Banyana Banyana star, Portia Modise says women in football deserve better.
— Palesa Dlamini (@PalesaDlamini_0) March 5, 2020
A passionate Modise says more support needs to be given to the women who represent the country in the sport. #WomeninFootball pic.twitter.com/nc1KXMJhqG
“This cycle cannot continue and then we go around saying women’s football has grown in the country.”
Besides wages, women in sport have faced discrimination in various other ways.
Earlier this week, Olympic gold medallist middle-distance runner Caster Semenya expressed the hurdle she had to face and overcome in her career following questions around her gender.
She was speaking at the launch of the Bridgestone, Chase Your Dream, No Matter What campaign, where she was announced as one of the ambassadors for the Tokyo Olympics.
Semenya spoke about the many “battles that I have overcome, since the age of 18”.
“You become a world champion and then your gender is questioned. I think that was one of the most difficult parts of my life,” she said.
The world athletics body IAAF, last year introduced new track and field rules that prevent Semenya from competing in events between of 400m and 1 500m if she does not take testosterone-reducing drugs.
South Africa’s golden girl, as Semenya is affectionately known, broke onto the world stage in 2009, and has been embroiled in a long struggle to convince the IAAF, that she has the right to compete against other women.
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