Players from the Women’s Championship membership Lewes have written an open letter calling for equivalent FA Cup prize cash sooner than their quarter-final in opposition to Manchester United.
The letter highlights the large hole in prize cash between the boys’s and girls’s competitions. Lewes have gained £45,000 for profitable 3 ties to get this some distance, while the boys’s groups who entered on the 3rd spherical were paid £450,000. Women’s golf equipment obtain no cash for an FA Cup recreation being broadcast via the BBC, which is appearing the Lewes tie on Sunday, however males’s groups will every be paid £200,000 for his or her televised quarter-finals.
The letter, observed via the Guardian and printed on Tuesday, is addressed to Karen Carney, who’s main the federal government’s evaluate of the way forward for girls’s soccer, and encourages the general public to pledge make stronger. It says equivalent prize cash would turn into the ladies’s recreation on the subject of wages, amenities, apparatus, hospital therapy, staffing and commute prices.
“We’ve earned £45,000 for the club but if we were men we would have earned £450,000; I was shocked to know that that was the difference,” the Lewes midfielder Lauren Heria said. “We are happy the prize fund increased by £3m this year and we’ve had more money coming in from the Cup but still, comparatively, it is a small increase compared to where the men are at.”
In March last year the Football Association announced prize money for the Women’s FA Cup would increase about seven-fold, from £428,915 to just under £3m. However, the men’s prize pot received an uplift of £3.9m, from £15.9m to £19.8m, widening the gap.
“I’m totally mindful we are gonna get again: ‘Well, it higher to 3 million this yr, you will have to be proud of that,'” Heria mentioned. “The thing that I love about Lewes is they will never tell us to settle, whether that’s on the pitch or off the pitch. It is always: ‘No, you can expect more of yourselves and you can expect more of the club and more of society.'”
For Lewes, the difference in prize money is the difference between covering costs and transforming their fortunes and future. Lewes, the first club in the world to pay their men’s and women’s teams equally, have long campaigned for equal FA Cup prize money but this latest call is being led by the players.
“This is the first time it is from players,” the club captain, Rhian Cleverly, said. “This is Loz’s [Heria’s] ideas. She came up with the idea of writing a letter, she’s our Lotte Wubben-Moy, and we’ve just tried to support her as best as we can because we all live this day-in day-out. We understand what our friends are going through in different teams and clubs.”
Heria had been inspired by the letter instigated by the England and Arsenal defender Wubben-Moy that pushed for equal access to school sports and was sent to the Tory leadership hopefuls after the Lionesses’ Euros win last summer. When the announcement came last week that the government was meeting the team’s demands, everything Lewes had been planning felt more possible.
“We were totally inspired by that,” said defender Nat Johnson. “For us, a bit of this letter was about education and visibility but to now know that that actually can potentially lead to physical change just lifted why we want to do this.”
Cleverly said: “Their letter was just powerful. We literally had their letter as a template, and we’d go back and go: ‘What did the Lionesses do? If that worked for them then that’s what we need to replicate in some of the things that we’re doing in our letter.’ We’ll be playing against some of them on Sunday. That’s really powerful. We’re fighting against each other on Sunday but we’re fighting for the same things off the pitch and that’s just to improve women’s football in general.”
Heria mentioned that they had addressed the letter to Carney – “a fantastic ally” – as a result of as head of the evaluate she has the “power to make change” which might “develop the sport and have a huge impact on the pyramid”.
An FA spokesperson mentioned the Women’s FA Cup had “record levels of investment into the competition” and “our primary focus is to attract new audiences to the competition with live matches on free-to-air television with the BBC.” We are all the time taking a look to make additional enhancements and funding around the girls’s recreation to lend a hand it thrive sooner or later.”