“We have to think about a campaign for International Women’s Day, something about gender inequality,” the marketing director tells his team. Everyone in the meeting nods. All men.
“Let’s do something for Black Consciousness, talk about racism, the consequences of slavery”, he calls a few months later. The answer is 100% positive. And again, the meeting members are 100% male, 100% white.
Behold, superior orders arrive for the team. It will be necessary to hire women and blacks for the newly opened positions in the department. The marketing director and his colleagues counter: “What nonsense, no matter what color or gender, it has to be competent.”
Competence is the minimum, of course. But do they not realize that color and gender mattered enough for them to reach these positions. Or was it a mere coincidence that they were all male and all white? This merit was not acquired or earned, it was given at birth.
It is not possible to debate meritocracy without the context of the starting point.
This week, the decision of a historic agreement involving the North American soccer teams reverberated worldwide. In the struggle to achieve equal pay since 2019, the victorious women’s team has gone to court. And, among all the agreements with US Soccer (American Football Confederation), there was one aspect to be equaled: the World Cup awards.
That’s because FIFA pays very different awards in the men’s and women’s World Cup. A team eliminated in the first round of this year’s World Cup will earn more than double (US$9 million, R$43.2 million at current rates) the amount paid to the champions of the 2019 Women’s World Cup (US$4 million). , R$ 19.2 million).
To equalize the payouts, the US men’s and women’s teams agreed to add up all FIFA prize pools and divide 90% of them equally between male and female players (10% are from US Soccer). That is, men gave up earning more at first in favor of what they thought was fair – women being rewarded for their efforts (which, by the way, generate much better results than theirs).
This news made many question: well, but the men’s World Cup generates a lot more money, so it’s fair that men earn more and period, market logic. The analysis is as obvious as it is limited. The context in which men’s football developed is completely different from that observed in women’s football, which faced prohibition by law and a lot of resistance. One started over a hundred years ago, the other started having official competitions just over 30 years ago. The two did not have the same starting point.
The big difference in the historic decision of the United States is that there they decided not to accept inequality. And you, what do you do to fix it? When you allow inequality to perpetuate itself, you are colluding with it.
Over the course of a decade working in sports journalism, I have often heard colleagues wary of the arrival of women in the field. “Just arrived and already got it.” They don’t realize that we just arrived because we had to break down the hundreds of doors they always found open. We didn’t arrive invited, we had to “invade”. Just because we didn’t have the merit of being born “the right gender”.
And then I ask those who say they are anti-racists, allies of feminism and the fight for the rights of the LGBTQIA+ population: are you willing to lose privileges?
To be an ally is to recognize that your privilege comes with the suffering of others. That a world with equal rights will be better for everyone (not for the minority, as it is today). It’s not blacks, women and gays who need to be bothered with racism, machismo, homophobia. It’s everybody.
To bother, in this case, is to do something.
I have worked in the news industry for over 10 years. I have a vast amount of experience in covering health news. I am also an author at News Bulletin 247. I am highly experienced and knowledgeable in this field. I am a hard worker and always deliver quality work. I am a reliable source of information and always provide accurate information.
