Peres Center hosts event a month ahead of the FIFA Women’s World Cup finals; speakers say unequal funding puts them at a disadvantage compared to men
The Peres Center for Peace and Innovation brought together athletes, coaches and sports development advocates Thursday evening in Jaffa to discuss the challenges facing women soccer players in Israel and abroad.
A number of Israeli and American youth athletes attended the event, which was held together with the US Embassy in Israel and leading sports organizations, and featured speakers involved in women’s soccer and a film screening held in the center’s auditorium.
In her opening remarks to the audience, Deputy Chief of Mission at the US Embassy Stephanie Hallett stressed her hope that sports become “a means for advancing equality… especially among women and girls.”
But according to the speakers following the American official, there’s a lot to be done before that hope is realized: Women’s soccer is notoriously underfunded compared to its male counterpart, and unequal pay, along with its consequences, massively hinder the growth of the sport in Israel.
“We don’t get paid enough, so we have to work on the side — we can’t be 100% focused on just being soccer players,” said Rachel Steinschneider, who plays for the Hapoel Jerusalem women’s team.
Unable to dedicate herself full-time to her passion, Steinschneider works as a data engineer for General Motors on top of her athletic career.
Yasmin Awad, who played soccer with Steinschneider on the Technion’s women’s team, has a similar story. In addition to volunteer coaching women’s soccer in Tamra, an Arab city in northern Israel, Awad also works as a civil engineer for the Israel Electric Corporation.
“There are not enough coaches who are willing to do it pro bono,” she said, noting how difficult it is to juggle her professional career and coaching. “I don’t have time for myself, I work from 7 a.m. to 5 p.m. as an engineer, then do three or four hours as a coach,” she said.
After two panels of speakers, Moroccan social entrepreneur Fatima Azzahra Benfares addressed the crowd over Zoom from her home in Rabat, speaking about her efforts to encourage soccer among girls in Morocco. She is the director of the government-sponsored program, “She Plays Football,” which seeks to broaden opportunities for girls to play the sport.
Getting parents involved and alleviating their anxieties about team sports was a major goal of Benfares. She mentioned that oftentimes, “parents don’t want [their children] to participate in sports because they don’t want them to be with a male coach all the time.” She stressed the importance of qualified women coaches to her initiative.
Over the past five years in Morocco, Benfares has seen a major change in how female youth athletes perceive themselves.
“Girls now, they don’t want to imitate a male player when they want to be taken seriously,” she said. “If you ask her who her favorite player is she won’t say Christiano Ronaldo anymore, she might say Alex Morgan. They have role models, representation matters.”
Sports in general are something that can connect people and place children from an early age “in a situation of dialogue, where they can meet the ‘other,’” according to Moran Messica-Eidelman, CEO of Athena, a program advancing women’s sports in Israel.
Eidelman was raised in Beersheba to working-class parents who immigrated from Argentina. She recalled that her involvement in soccer from an early age allowed her to visit parts of Israel that she didn’t frequent beforehand, like Tel Aviv and Jerusalem.
“Empowering women in sports is not only about scoring goals on the field but also about breaking down barriers and challenging societal norms,” said Tami Hay, the Peres Center’s Deputy Director General for Education. She remarked on the power of sports to “build bridges and establish a common language,” especially in the context of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Women’s soccer has gained more prominence over the past few years following the groundbreaking 2019 lawsuit by the US women’s national team demanding equal pay from the US Soccer Federation, which paid the men’s team more for the same work.
After hearing from the speakers, the crowd viewed the documentary “LFG,” about the women’s team and their lawsuit, which they eventually lost. The team reached a settlement for equal pay with the USSF three years later.
Speakers from the Israel Football Association and Israel’s Ministry of Sport and Culture were also present on the panels, and the Olympic Committee of Israel lent its support to the event.
“I feel like there’s a change taking place,” said Steinschneider. “Every time I talk to a young female player, I say: ‘Things might seem bleak now, but there are good things coming up.’”
