Equal pay in football? Norway still far from goal

Oslo (AFP)

Guro devotes 60 to 70 hours a week, half of his time to football and the other half to his job, but that is exactly what happens if you are a female footballer in Norway.

The Scandinavian country made the headlines by announcing, in October 2017, that its national team would earn the same salary as its male counterparts, in an innovative gesture.

But the equal pay of other professional football players remains a dream, even in this egalitarian country.

While first-division salaries in Norway do not come close to the astronomical sums earned by Messis Ronaldo and Messis of the men's world championships, men still earn much more than women, who usually earn a few hundred euros per month. months while they are under professional contract.

To make ends meet, most players take jobs off the field, or study and live on student loans.

"You really have to love what you do, because otherwise you do not have the heart to do it," says Guro Bergsvand, Stabaek's club supporter, who is now head of the administration. from a computer company.

His daily routine is packed and disciplined.

Every day she leaves home at 6:00 am for a workout. Then she has a "normal" work day at the office and completes it with football drills. She usually returns home at 7:00 pm or 8:00 pm

"It's not easy, your employer must understand you too, he must understand that women play football, because not everyone does it," she says.

– Underfunded –

Norway is one of the leading nations in women's football, winning the World Cup in 1995, two European championships in 1987 and 1993 and an Olympic gold medal in 2000.

It also houses the first female winner of the Golden Ball, Ada Hegerberg, a model for aspiring young talents – and who complained of the lack of respect that the Norwegian Football Federation has shown towards football women and boycotted the national team. during two years.

For this reason, Hegerberg is absent from the football World Cup in France where Norway will play its first game against the host country on Wednesday.

But the professional women's league remains cruelly underfunded.

Nearly eight out of 10 women's Toppserie players earn less than 100,000 crowns (€ 10,200, $ 11,590) a year, according to a report by the newspaper VG. And 13.6% of them do not earn a dime.

In 2017, the Avaldsnes club had to resort to online crowdfunding to make ends meet in order to travel to Montenegro for the UEFA Champions League qualifiers.

In the same year, the average income of a Rosenborg player, who won the first division, was higher than that of all the combined players who played for LSK, who won the first division.

Even at Lillestrom, the lowest-ranked team in the men's division, the average salary of players was 3.5 times higher than that of LSK players that year.

– Progress –

Due to the pressure of full-time work in addition to football, many young talents are exhausting quickly and giving up too soon.

Others go abroad, like the Hegerberg sisters – Ada plays for European champion Lyon and Andrine for Paris Saint-Germain or Caroline Graham Hansen who just left Wolfsburg for Barcelona.

And some have left school, at the risk of jeopardizing their future career.

"It was too difficult, I have been trying for a long time to find a balance between my studies and full time football," says Kristine Leine, a Roa defender who took a break from the team. nurse school.

"It worked for a few years, but I noticed that I had not progressed enough in football.I was often too tired at workout to give it all," says she.

The 2017 agreement granting Norwegian and male national team players the same salaries – a first in the world – is seen as a first step in the right direction.

The sponsors also finance the clubs by giving them more money to enable them, for example, to organize a weekly "pro day" entirely devoted to the training of girls.

But it 's not just the pay gap, says Guro Bergsvand, who gets nervous regularly for other things.

For example, there is no physiotherapist present at women's practices, although there is one at the boys' academy for 12 and 13 year olds.

And PowerPoint presentations made for boys teams that nobody cares to change for girls teams.

"These differences in the way we are treated hurt."

? AFP 2019