You could be forgiven if you hadn’t noticed that England are playing in a football match tonight in the World Cup semi-finals against reigning champions Japan. Although the game is being shown live on BBC1 there has been relatively small coverage in the media. The highest earning player in the tournament is reportedly paid almost £2million per year, largely from sponsorship deals.

Alex Morgan is the USA striker, currently employed by Portland Thorns, a women’s football team. Not bad you might think, but compare it to £13million the average English Premier league male counterpart earns and you see the huge inequality that still exists in sport.

Captain of the women’s England team Steph Houghton earns around £65,000 per year playing for Manchester City. The average wage of a male Manchester City player is £102,653 per week.

Despite the Englishmen’s failure to win the world cup since 1966 if they were playing tonight in a semi-final the coverage would be fever pitch. Every advert on TV would be for cheap alcohol, cheap TVs and no doubt fast food chains sponsoring the game. The women’s team have played some very decent football. There are dozens of women’s teams up and down the country playing in all sorts of leagues but barely any of them receive any media attention. A quick google search to find the best paid woman in football brings up a site that shamelessly states that Alex Morgan is one of the most beautiful women in football. I googled best paid male and there was mention of how attractive Manchester city captain, Vincent Company is.

This week also sees of course tennis from Wimbledon. While the prize money of the completion will see men and women both earn a massive £1.88million each, the top three highest paid players are all men.  Swiss Roger Federer reportedly earned $56.2 million last year, compared to the top female player- Maria Sharapova who earned just $24.4 million.

Forbes rich list reported this year that the world’s wealthiest man Bill Gates has a net worth of $79.2billion. The highest ranked woman on the list is Wal-Mart’s Christy Walton who is worth $41.7billion although some might argue she gained the money from her late husband John T Walton. Way down the list at number 22 is the highest paid individual woman who is worth a measly $26.6billion.

So could England’s women winning the world cup be the springboard needed to make us recognise the contribution of women both in sport and in the workplace and paying them what they rightly deserve? I doubt it but hopefully the game will be worth staying up for.

C’mon England!