KUALA LUMPUR, Jan 11 — They make less than minimum wage, with many as little as RM800 a month. To get by, some of these women juggle two jobs, carefully scheduled, to allow them to make it for training in the late evening. Welcome to the everyday life of the Liga Wanita Nasional (LWN).
The league, introduced by the governing football body Football Association of Malaysia (FAM), is now in its second season. But ask even the most hardcore of football fans here if they know the league exists, and you will most likely get blank stares.
The league has gone on relatively invisible, obscured by what women players see as entrenched sexism that continues to dominate the beautiful game.
Nowhere is this gender inequality more apparent than the disparity in salaries between the men and women.
A male player representing a second division club can still live entirely off his salary, which can be anywhere between RM4,000 and RM5,500.
In LWN, only a handful of players have gone fully professional, meaning they can support themselves financially just by playing football.
"It’s hard when you have to think about surviving monthly. I, for example want peace of mind, so I can focus on just playing and improving,” said Puteri Arissa Balqis, a centre/right back who plays for Malaysian University, a club that pools their players from local institutions, as no single university has enough women players to form a club of its own.
"I personally know players who have to juggle two or even three jobs,” added the 24-year-old finance and accounting student, who also has six senior national caps.
Global women’s football is big bucks
FAM’s introduction of LWN, which some have criticised as being a little too late, came amid the rapidly growing interest in women’s football.
On almost every metric, women’s football is seeing tremendous growth globally — millions more girls and women are playing the game now compared to just a few years ago, and clubs have mushroomed, forcing major sportswear brands to pay attention.
In today’s world, club football advertisements rarely exclude top women players because of their star-power among young girls, making them crucial cash-making ambassadors.
Meanwhile Fifa, the game’s world governing body, said the average live match audience for the Women’s World Cup has increased from 8.4 million in 2015 to 17.27 million in 2019.
Last year’s Women’s World Cup jointly held by Australia and New Zealand was hailed as the most successful, as venues were packed by both women and men, from the group stages all the way to the final.
In Australia, an average of 30,000 fans attended each match, more than double what most Malaysian Super League clubs can boast. The tournament generated a record US$1.14 billion (RM5.04 billion) in revenue.
The scenes at last year’s World Cup and the growing attendance at professional women’s football leagues across Europe serve as an inspiration for a player like Puteri, who wishes Malaysian women’s football could one day compete with the likes of Vietnam, the first south-east Asian country to have qualified for the Women’s World Cup finals.
But the state of the LWN today still leaves much to be desired, and because of this, it can deter even the most optimistic of players.
"By January I’m going to start working at EY (Ernst & Young). I’m happy (to have gotten the offer),” she said.
"My heart still wants to play football, which is why I’m a little split about this. This is why I said we need a system whereby the players are paid fairly so they can focus on playing football full time,” she added.
"You can’t expect women’s football to develop if players have to think about putting food in their mouths or paying the bills every month.”
Funding hiccup
Of course, the major obstacle hampering efforts to promote LWN, or domestic women’s football in general, is the lack of funding.
Only three clubs in the league represent the state football associations — Sabah, Selangor and Melaka — which means they may enjoy some degree of financial and infrastructure support although this may not necessarily be the case all the time.
Melaka FA, for example, is reportedly in financial straits.
Women players there have said their salaries have been overdue for months, with no solution seemingly in sight.
Only Sabah’s women’s team is doing fairly well, according to several LWN players. It is currently the only women’s team from Malaysia playing in the AFC Champions League.
Other clubs, like Puteri’s Malaysian University, is one of the five privately funded clubs operating mostly on grants and donations.
Between July to December, these eight clubs will battle it out almost every weekend before just a handful of supporters, mostly family and friends.
While some do get sponsors, they are rare and are usually reserved for star players. A key reason for this is LWN lacks visibility, which means brands or companies see little incentive to invest. The league rarely gets any media coverage, if any.
"I think FAM needs to be more creative in trying to develop the business side of the league, something they lack at the moment,” said a writer for Invading Your Pitch, an Instagram page dedicated to women’s football, who requested to remain anonymous.
"I can say they are good at developing (women’s football) at the grassroots level but what happens when they reach senior age? How do this pool of talents, and we have plenty of talents, evolve if there is no ecosystem that could absorb them,” the blogger added.
"So how do you expect women’s football here to grow?”
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