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What explains the pay gap in women's soccer?
The U.S. Soccer Federation says "market realities" explain the pay gap. Others say it's institutionalized sexism.
- The U.S. women's soccer team recently won its fourth World Cup title.
- The U.S. women's team has been far more successful than the men's team in recent years, yet men still receive higher pay.
- All 28 players on the U.S. women's team have filed a lawsuit against the U.S. Soccer Federation over claims of unequal pay.
The U.S. women's soccer team won its fourth World Cup title on Sunday with a 2-0 victory over the Netherlands. Shortly after, the crowd started chanting "equal pay!" — referencing the claim that the United States Soccer Federation (aka U.S. Soccer) unjustly pays female players less than male players. It's been a long-standing point of contention between female players and U.S. Soccer — which is the body that governs America's national soccer teams — though it was only in March that all 28 female players on the U.S. team decided to sue U.S. Soccer.
The class-action lawsuit claimed that "female players have been consistently paid less money than their male counterparts. This is true even though their performance has been superior to that of the male players – with the female players, in contrast to male players, becoming world champions." The complaint added that U.S. Soccer also failed to provide female players with equal working conditions, promotion and support.
The @USWNT won their fourth World Cup yesterday. These players deserve more than just trophies, the team deserves e… https://t.co/xwG8FYe8wK— Gavin Newsom (@Gavin Newsom)1562607015.0
In a May court filing, U.S. Soccer argued that the pay gap is "based on differences in aggregate revenue generated by the different teams and/or any other factor other than sex." Last week, more than 50 members of Congress signed an open letter to U.S. Soccer President Carlos Cordeiro in support of the women's team. Some lawmakers also expressed support on Twitter. Meanwhile, the women's team's case is heading to mediation.
At this point we shouldn’t even be asking for #EqualPay for the #USWMNT - we should demand they be paid at least tw… https://t.co/npJbMUhnWL— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez)1562520370.0
So, what explains the gender pay gap? How is it fair that the more-successful women's team earns less than the men's team? Does women's soccer simply generate less revenue? Is institutionalized sexism to blame?
There's no immediately clear answer, but you can get some insight by looking at the differences between the men's and women's teams in terms of revenue generation, collective-bargaining agreements and awards from FIFA.
Revenue
U.S. men's teams have historically generated more revenue than women's teams. But that's beginning to change — at least in terms of gate revenues, which consist mainly of ticket sales. As The Wall Street Journal notes in a recent article:
"From 2016 to 2018, women's games generated about $50.8 million in revenue compared with $49.9 million for the men, according to U.S. soccer's audited financial statements. In 2016, the year after the World Cup, the women generated $1.9 million more than the men."
But only about one-quarter of U.S. Soccer's total operating revenue can be attributed to gate revenues, according to the federation's financial documents. The other revenues come mainly from broadcasting and sponsorships, and it's difficult to parse out which teams contribute more to these revenues because U.S. Soccer sells sponsorships and broadcasting rights as a bundled package.
Still, there's reason to think that the recent success and popularity of the women's team is boosting revenues: Nike chief executive Mark Parker said that the U.S. women's team home jersey "is now the number one soccer jersey, men's or women's, ever sold on Nike.com in one season," according to The Washington Post.
Collective bargaining
The U.S. men's and women's teams have different collective-bargaining agreements with U.S. Soccer. The most noticeable difference lies in bonus structure and amounts. As a recent piece from The Guardian notes, male players stand to earn more money in bonuses as they progress through a World Cup. But that's just the World Cup: The men's and women's teams earn bonuses (of different kinds and amounts) in other games and tournaments, under a variety of differing conditions. Overall, men earn more in bonuses. But a recent update to the women's team deal has narrowed the bonus gap, and also made it so that female players earn a base salary (male players only earn money through bonuses).
In short, comparing earnings between male and female players is complicated, and a 1:1 comparison is impossible. For 2019, it looks like the women's team will earn more than the men's team — but only because of their extraordinary success, and the men's team's relative failure.
World Cup
Understanding how the World Cup factors into the soccer pay gap requires some knowledge of the relationship between FIFA and U.S. Soccer.
FIFA runs the World Cup. It determines how much prize money the winning nation's team receives. After that team wins the World Cup, FIFA awards a predetermined purse of prize money to that nation's soccer federation — but those purses vary drastically by gender. As The Washington Post notes:
"Total prize money for the Women's World Cup in 2019 is $30 million — the champions will walk away with about $4 million. For contrast, in the 2018 Men's World Cup, the champions won $38 million from a total pool of about $400 million. In other words, the champions from the men's world cup were awarded more than the total prize money in the women's tournament. So there's no question that there's a huge gap in earning potential here."
Why such a discrepancy? The men's World Cup currently generates more money, by far. For context, FIFA earned upwards of $6 billion from the 2018 men's World Cup. Meanwhile, the women's 2019 World Cup is estimated to earn FIFA about $131 million.
So, even though the U.S. women's team is more successful than the men's team, the numbers suggest that men's soccer is currently a more valuable product — especially on the international stage. That means the male players deserve to earn more, right? Needless to say, not everyone agrees.
A recent op-ed from The New York Times editorial board argues that revenue is "the wrong measuring stick" in this debate.
"United States Soccer is a nonprofit, exempted from taxation because it serves a social purpose: "To make soccer, in all its forms, a pre-eminent sport in the United States," the Times editorial board wrote. "It should be obvious to the people who run the federation that the women's team is fulfilling that mission at least as well as the men's team."
The piece also notes that it's U.S. Soccer — not FIFA — that ultimately gives award money to players, and therefore the federation could use its discretion to pay all players equally. In short, this argument acknowledges that men's soccer brings in more money overall, but says that's not the most important measure by which this debate should be judged.
(It's worth noting the obvious: This current debate about women's soccer is embedded within a broader culture war over gender equality and the gender pay gap, and it's likely that many are treating this story as a proxy battle in that broader war.)
Another point that the Times and others have made in recent days goes something like: Sure, men's soccer earns more money, but that's partly because federations aren't investing enough money into women's soccer. If they did, women's soccer would be more popular and generate more money.
What's next?
For now, the women's team and U.S. soccer are heading into mediation. The federation maintains that "market realities" are responsible for the pay gap in American soccer. But that could soon change if the women's team can strike a deal with U.S. Soccer on a revenue-sharing model.
"Under this model, player compensation would increase in years in which the USSF derived more revenue from WNT activities and player compensation would be less if revenue from those activities decreased," the 28 U.S. female players wrote in their recent court complaint. "This showed the players' willingness to share in the risk and reward of the economic success of the WNT."
U.S. Soccer "categorically rejected" this model. But the U.S. National Soccer Team Players Association — which is the players union for the United States men's national soccer team — has expressed support for it.
"The United States National Soccer Team Players Association fully supports the efforts of the US Women's National Team Players to achieve equal pay," reads the statement. "Specifically, we are committed to the concept of a revenue-sharing model to address the US Soccer Federation's 'market realities' and find a way towards fair compensation."
Humanity's most distant space probe captures a strange sound
A new paper reveals that the Voyager 1 spacecraft detected a constant hum coming from outside our Solar System.
Voyager 1 in interstellar space.
- Voyager 1, humankind's most distant space probe, detected an unusual "hum" in the data from interstellar space.
- The noise is likely produced by interstellar gas.
- Further investigation may reveal the hum's exact origins.
Voyager 1, humanity's most faraway spacecraft, has detected an unusual "hum" coming from outside our solar system. Fourteen billion miles away from Earth, the Voyager's instruments picked up a droning sound that may be caused by plasma (ionized gas) in the vast emptiness of interstellar space. Launched in 1977, the Voyager 1 space probe — along with its twin Voyager 2 — has been traveling farther and farther into space for over 44 years. It has now breached the edge of our solar system, exiting the heliosphere, the bubble-like region of space influenced by the sun. Now, the spacecraft is moving through the "interstellar medium," where it recorded the peculiar sound.
Stella Koch Ocker, a doctoral student in astronomy at Cornell University, discovered the sound in the data from the Voyager's Plasma Wave System (PWS), which measures electron density. Ocker called the drone coming from plasma shock waves "very faint and monotone," likely due to the narrow bandwidth of its frequency.
While they think the persistent background hum may be coming from interstellar gas, the researchers don't yet know what exactly is causing it. It might be produced by "thermally excited plasma oscillations and quasi-thermal noise."
The new paper from Ocker and her colleagues at Cornell University and the University of Iowa, published in Nature Astronomy, also proposes that this is not the last we'll hear of the strange noise. The scientists write that "the emission's persistence suggests that Voyager 1 may be able to continue tracking the interstellar plasma density in the absence of shock-generated plasma oscillation events."
Voyager Captures Sounds of Interstellar Space www.youtube.com
The researchers think the droning sound may hold clues to how interstellar space and the heliopause, which can be thought of as the solar's system border, may be affecting each other. When it first entered interstellar space, the PWS instrument reported disturbances in the gas caused by the sun. But in between such eruptions is where the researchers spotted the steady signature made by the near-vacuum.
Senior author James Cordes, a professor of astronomy at Cornell, compared the interstellar medium to "a quiet or gentle rain," adding that "in the case of a solar outburst, it's like detecting a lightning burst in a thunderstorm and then it's back to a gentle rain."
More data from Voyager over the next few years may hold crucial information to the origins of the hum. The findings are already remarkable considering the space probe is functioning on technology from the mid-1970s. The craft has about 70 kilobytes of computer memory. It also carries a Golden Record created by a committee chaired by the late Carl Sagan, who taught at Cornell University. The 12-inch gold-plated copper disk record is essentially a time capsule, meant to tell the story of Earthlings to extraterrestrials. It contains sounds and images that showcase the diversity of Earth's life and culture.
We're winning the war on cancer
As the American population grows, fewer people will die of cancer.
- A new study projects that cancer deaths will decrease in relative and absolute terms by 2040.
- The biggest decrease will be among lung cancer deaths, which are predicted to fall by 50 percent.
- Cancer is like terrorism: we cannot eliminate it entirely, but we can minimize its influence.
As the #2 leading cause of death, cancer takes the lives of about 600,000 Americans each year. In comparison, heart disease (#1) claims more than 650,000 lives, while accidents (#3) take about 175,000 lives. (In 2020 and likely 2021, COVID will claim the #3 spot.)
Headlines are usually full of terrible news about cancer. Seemingly, you can't get away from anything that causes it. RealClearScience made a list of all the things blamed for cancer — antiperspirants, salty soup, eggs, corn, Pringles, bras, burnt toast, and even Facebook made the list.
The reality, however, is much more optimistic. We're slowly but surely winning the war on cancer.
Winning the war on cancer
How can we make such a brazen statement? A new paper published in the journal JAMA Network Open tracks trends in cancer incidence and deaths and makes projections to the year 2040. The authors predict that around 568,000 Americans will have died of cancer in 2020, but they project that number to fall to 410,000 by 2040. That's a drop of nearly 28 percent, despite the U.S. population being projected to grow from roughly 333 million today to 374 million in 2040, an increase of 12 percent. That means cancer deaths will decrease in both relative and absolute terms.
What accounts for this unexpected good news? The lion's share is the number of deaths attributable to lung cancer, which is projected to decrease by more than 50 percent, from 130,000 to 63,000. This drop is largely due to the decreasing use of tobacco products. Other deaths predicted to decline include those from colorectal, breast, prostate, and ovarian cancers, among others, such as leukemia and non-Hodgkin lymphoma (NHL).
The authors credit screening and biomedical advances for saving many of these lives. For instance, lead author Dr. Lola Rahib wrote in an email to Big Think that "colonoscopies remove precancerous polyps." She also noted that targeted therapies and immunotherapies have helped reduce the number of deaths from leukemia and NHL.
We'll never cure cancer
Now the bad news: We'll never cure cancer. There are at least three reasons for this. The first is obvious: We all die. The lifetime prevalence of death is 100 percent. The truth is that we are running out of things to die from. After a long enough period of time, something gives out — often your cardiovascular system or nervous system. Or you develop you cancer.
The second reason is that we are multicellular organisms and, hence, we are susceptible to cancer. (Contrary to popular myth, sharks get cancer, too.) The cells of multicellular organisms face an existential dilemma: they can either get old and stop dividing (a process called senescence) or become immortal but cancerous. For this reason, the problem of cancer may not have a solution.
Finally, there isn't really such a thing as a disease called "cancer." What we call cancer is actually a collection of several different diseases, some of which are preventable (like cervical cancer with the HPV vaccine) or curable (like prostate cancer). Unfortunately, some cancers probably never will be curable, not least because cancers can mutate and develop resistance to the drugs we use to treat them.
But the overall optimism still stands: We are slowly and incrementally winning the war on cancer. Like terrorism, it's not a foe that we can completely vanquish, but it is one whose influence we can minimize in our lives.
China's "artificial sun" sets new record for fusion power
China has reached a new record for nuclear fusion at 120 million degrees Celsius.
This article was originally published on our sister site, Freethink.
China wants to build a mini-star on Earth and house it in a reactor. Many teams across the globe have this same bold goal --- which would create unlimited clean energy via nuclear fusion.
But according to Chinese state media, New Atlas reports, the team at the Experimental Advanced Superconducting Tokamak (EAST) has set a new world record: temperatures of 120 million degrees Celsius for 101 seconds.
Yeah, that's hot. So what? Nuclear fusion reactions require an insane amount of heat and pressure --- a temperature environment similar to the sun, which is approximately 150 million degrees C.
If scientists can essentially build a sun on Earth, they can create endless energy by mimicking how the sun does it.
If scientists can essentially build a sun on Earth, they can create endless energy by mimicking how the sun does it. In nuclear fusion, the extreme heat and pressure create a plasma. Then, within that plasma, two or more hydrogen nuclei crash together, merge into a heavier atom, and release a ton of energy in the process.
Nuclear fusion milestones: The team at EAST built a giant metal torus (similar in shape to a giant donut) with a series of magnetic coils. The coils hold hot plasma where the reactions occur. They've reached many milestones along the way.
According to New Atlas, in 2016, the scientists at EAST could heat hydrogen plasma to roughly 50 million degrees C for 102 seconds. Two years later, they reached 100 million degrees for 10 seconds.
The temperatures are impressive, but the short reaction times, and lack of pressure are another obstacle. Fusion is simple for the sun, because stars are massive and gravity provides even pressure all over the surface. The pressure squeezes hydrogen gas in the sun's core so immensely that several nuclei combine to form one atom, releasing energy.
But on Earth, we have to supply all of the pressure to keep the reaction going, and it has to be perfectly even. It's hard to do this for any length of time, and it uses a ton of energy. So the reactions usually fizzle out in minutes or seconds.
Still, the latest record of 120 million degrees and 101 seconds is one more step toward sustaining longer and hotter reactions.
Why does this matter? No one denies that humankind needs a clean, unlimited source of energy.
We all recognize that oil and gas are limited resources. But even wind and solar power --- renewable energies --- are fundamentally limited. They are dependent upon a breezy day or a cloudless sky, which we can't always count on.
Nuclear fusion is clean, safe, and environmentally sustainable --- its fuel is a nearly limitless resource since it is simply hydrogen (which can be easily made from water).
With each new milestone, we are creeping closer and closer to a breakthrough for unlimited, clean energy.
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