I hear/agree with you. Soccer and tennis are two of the few sports where the rules are the same for men and women, making it exciting for all to watch. Neither is a “watered down.” It sucks that the masses (dudes) don’t see this and support it. Consequently, it looks (and it IS) another facet of inequality. Also, girls don’t cry when they play. 😉
Oof... Idk, I saw Julie Johnston cry when she gave away that penalty vs Germany and thought she was going to get a red card ;) hahaha... It’s funny me and my friends were talking about how women’s tennis and soccer are the only ones that get any attention and are the most popular ones, maybe that’s why! It does have to do with sexism, but not in the way most people think. As corrupt as FIFA is, and trust me they are an extremely corrupt organization, they pay them a small amount of money relative to the large chunk they pocket. Likewise with the men, Germany got paid 35 million for winning, while FIFA made billions probably lol. And that’s not counting the fact that most of the money they win, doesn’t even go to the players it goes to their respective federation. Basically, the federations get to decide how much the players get paid or not. Something I don’t think most people even know about, but that’s a whole other story... But most of the does sexism comes from Football fans who refuse to watch the women. This is from all the other countries that participated. How many people really watched Japan vs England in the semi-final, even the stadium wasn’t full to capacity and that was aired on Fox too. Sure a lot of people watched the final, but that’s just one game and those numbers were unprecedented, if you watched the whole tournament (which most people didn’t) most of the time the stadiums weren’t even half empty. Kind of unfair to judge them on viewership for the tournament as a whole because they were competing with the Copa America for the whole tournament, except for the final. Anyways idk what I’m trying to get at here I think I just went on a long tangent that doesn’t make any sense at all.
TL;DR There isn’t enough money in the women’s game to pay them as much as the men get paid, simple as that.