FIFA 16: EA Sports addresses gender equality among other improvements to the new FIFA game.
By Emma Carson, Staff Writer
On September 22, EA Sports released its newest video game, FIFA 16. This edition includes stunning visual presentation, an improved career mode, an added trainer for beginning players, realistic team playing styles and most notably, women’s soccer.
As a female soccer player who loves to play FIFA, I am excited to to start playing as the women I have always admired. This change has shed some light on young soccer players and gamers like me. The newest game will likely become the most popular and the best-selling, and this change may send sales skyrocketing even further.
Beyond sales, however, this change addresses something bigger: gender equality. The first thing someone notices when they purchase the game is the cover. It still has the familiar face of Lionel Messi, the greatest footballer of his generation and the face of EA Sport’s FIFA since the first game came out, but is joined for the first time ever with a woman from the U.S. Women’s National Team: Alex Morgan.
Ever since the early twentieth century, female soccer players were forced to quit their passion and sit and watch the men have all the glory. In 1951, the first real women’s league was established in Europe and popularized from there. It wasn’t until the 1970s that the phenomenon started in the U.S. Even then, women’s soccer was barely popular. It would take until the late twentieth and early twenty-first century that both men’s and women’s soccer became popular. Since more men were playing than women, men’s soccer won the popularity contest and the sexism began.
Over the years, FIFA had excluded women from leadership roles and had been paid much less than their male counterparts. These differences were blatant and egregious; the highest paid men received as much as $40 million per year and the highest paid women averaging only $140,000 per year.
At this point in time, there’s no quick fix solution to sexism in sports. It will take time, but as a society, we can stop sexism in all sports by recognizing the talents of all athletes, regardless of gender. EA Sports is jump-starting that revolution with FIFA 16. I am anxiously awaiting to get my hands on the game and start playing as both the men and the women of the soccer world.