MADRID: Unions representing players in Spain’s women’s football league have called off their strike after reaching an agreement on minimum wages, the Liga F organisation said on Thursday.

The players went on strike at the start of the month before the first two fixtures of the season after failing to reach an agreement with the league on better conditions and pay.

Liga F, the organising body of the top league of women’s football in Spain, and the players’ unions signed an agreement for the next three seasons.

It guarantees a minimum salary of 21,000 euros ($22,369) per year for the current season, with the potential to rise to 23,000 euros depending on the growth of commercial income.

The minimum salary for next season will be 22,500 euros, with the potential to rise up to 25,000 euros, and the minimum salary for the final season covered by the agreement has been set at 23,500 euros, potentially increasing to 28,000 euros.

“When we see the gap that exists between the minimum wage, which for men’s football is of 182,000 euros, the difference is big,” Keka Vega, the women’s football coordinator of the Spanish Footballers’ Association (AFE) union, said on Thursday.

“We as unions need to work hard to achieve what the players are demanding that is to reduce the gap.”

The strike was not related to the furore over Luis Rubiales, who resigned this week as head of the Spanish football federation amid widespread condemnation of his kiss on the lips of Spanish player Jenni Hermoso at the medal ceremony after the national side’s World Cup victory last month.

The entire World Cup-winning squad and other leading female footballers in Spain have said they will boycott the national women’s team while the current leadership of that federation remains in place.

“I think this will be a turning point for the history of women’s football around the world,” Vega said.

“As Spain, winning the World Cup, I think it has opened doors, we have seen the TV ratings, the attendance in the stadiums and all of that has to have repercussions for our football.

“The people are hooked, the stadiums are going to fill up and that’s where we have to work to take care of the product, so that it continues to grow and in the end we can achieve those objectives and those improvements in conditions that the footballers are asking us for.”

Liga F celebrated the agreement in a statement on Thursday, saying a “much-needed peace scenario” was achieved “without losing sight of the sustainability of the competition”.

“A scenario that we hope will show the way to the rest of the institutions that form part of Spanish sport and allow the project of women’s professional football to move forward.”

Published in Dawn, September 15th, 2023