http://www.okayafrica.com/sports/nigeria-super-falcons-gender-pay-gap-football/

Payment Structure

Nigerian national team players are not salaried employees of the NFF per se. Payments to athletes are dispensed on a match-by-match basis primarily in two forms: camp allowances and match bonuses. So while the Super Falcons are camped at Abuja to train for their upcoming match against Mali on the 20th, they receive a daily stipend.

According to former Super Falcons midfielder Mercy Akide-Udoh, the daily stipend is the $50 from the news reports. “Payments are made once the competition ends,” she said. And the Falcons are then given the lump sum before they leave camp. Even with the $50 allowance being considered against the number of days spent at camp, a disparity prevails.

“Their money is always more than us,” Akide-Udoh said about the Eagles during a phone interview. She hasn’t played for the Falcons since 2005. “They might play one game and the [NFF] might say $10,000 for one game.

“They always say that the guys are playing in Europe; so they play professional soccer in Europe.”

Historically, the Falcons have also had foreign-based players. Akide-Udoh was the first African footballer to be drafted to a U.S. league; and current Falcons coach Florence Omagbemi was recruited to the San Diego Spirit in her heyday. Yet their overseas status was not enough to persuade the NFF to raise its pay for the Falcons long before Nigeria’s current recession hit.

Akide-Udoh joined the Falcons at 17. She was the first person to win the African Women Footballer of the Year in 2001. She admits some things have improved for the women of Nigerian football. When Akide-Udoh started playing for the Falcons in 1995, their daily allowance was N500 and they wore the oversized jerseys for the men’s team. The pay was increased to $50 (now N15,250) during the 2004 World Cup.

In addition to the camp allowance, Falcons who actually play at tournaments are promised match bonuses that are set by the NFF depending on how well players perform.

“The match bonus is where players really make their money because the federation might come out and say you win one match it’s $1500. You pass first round you get $750,” Akide-Udoh said

The Second Sex

It is no surprise that the Super Falcons are paid significantly less than the Super Eagles. Unlike the Falcons, the allure of the Eagles looms large and infinite in Nigeria’s public consciousness. The Super Eagles gave us the dream team of 1996 that made Nigeria the first African nation and the first non-European country in 68 years to win the Olympic gold. And the Eagles have been credited with being one of the rare sources of patriotism in the country.

Men have long dominated African football, particularly in terms of viewership; the Eagles are the kind of team that can attract 40,000 football fans to a 25,000-seat stadium in the world’s most crazed soccer nation. Type in “Super Eagles” in Google and you’ll spot their salient Wikipedia entry dubbing them the “Nigeria national football team.” The default. As if the women’s team were an accompaniment to check off attempts at gender equality.

But the gender pay gap is not just unique to the Falcons. Star players of the U.S. Women’s National Soccer Team—the reigning champions of the FIFA Women’s World Cup— filed a wage complaint with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission against the U.S. Soccer Federation in March, saying they are paid far less than the men’s team.