The football world, and sport at large, is on notice after FIFA made a landmark discrimination ruling against one of Europe’s biggest clubs for their underpayment of a player on maternity leave.
Sara Björk Gunnarsdóttir, the captain of Iceland’s national women’s team, sued her former club, Olympique Lyonnais, after the French club sent her pay cheques with a fraction of her salary while she was on leave, pregnant with her first child.
Sara Bjork Gunnarsdottir (centre) has been awarded more than $88,000 in back pay that was withheld by her former club team Lyon.Credit:Villar Lopez/Pool
“All I wanted was to enjoy my pregnancy, and work my ass off to come back to help the team and the club,” Gunnarsdóttir wrote in The Players’ Tribune. “But instead I felt confused, stressed, and betrayed.”
Gunnarsdóttir joined Lyon in 2020. Later that year she scored a goal in the UEFA Women’s Champions League final, a moment she’d dreamt of while growing up in Iceland, imagining herself taking on the best players in Europe.
In March 2021, she took a pregnancy test and the double lines flashed blue. Her surge of happiness was soon replaced by panic as she wondered how her team would react.
“In Europe, for a long time, it just hasn’t really been a normal thing for a player to get pregnant,” she wrote.
Gunnarsdóttir told her teammates at Lyon a week later and she agreed with the club she’d return home to Iceland for the pregnancy.
“But I wanted to return to Lyon after giving birth,” she wrote. “I was very clear about that. I believed that being the first player ever for Lyon to return from pregnancy would be something we could all celebrate together.”
Gunnarsdóttir was relieved to be home. But her first pay cheque was a fraction of her normal salary, a “small percentage from social security”. The next month’s cheque was the same.
“I was entitled to my full salary during my pregnancy and until the start of my maternity leave, according to the mandatory regulations from FIFA,” Gunnarsdóttir wrote. “These are part of my rights, and this can’t be disputed — even by a club as big as Lyon.”
Under new parental leave rules introduced by FIFA in January 2021, players at a minimum are entitled to 14 weeks’ parental leave paid with at least two-thirds of their salary.
Gunnarsdóttir’s said her attempts to contact the club were ignored for months. When the club’s director, Vincent Ponsot, eventually responded, he told her they were operating under French law rather than FIFA’s parental leave policy.
She worked with FIFPRO to lodge a complaint against Lyon with FIFA. The body ruled in favour of Gunnarsdóttir and ordered that Lyon pay €82,094.82 ($128,373.38) to Gunnarsdóttir – the full salary amount she’d missed – within 45 days or face a transfer ban.
The union said it was the first ruling to enforce FIFA’s new parental leave rules. The lawsuit exhausted Gunnarsdóttir but she felt vindicated by the ruling.
“The victory felt bigger than me,” she wrote. “It felt like a guarantee of financial security for all players who want to have a child during their career. That it’s not a ‘maybe’, or an unknown.”
The landmark FIFA decision comes after years of women’s sport stars battling for pay equity and maternity leave.
In 2015, the Matildas boycotted two games against the US amid a stand-off with what was then the Football Federation of Australia (FFA). The body had refused the team’s request to pay pregnant players or financially assist their return to play.
Laura Alleway was part of a 2015 boycott by the Matildas in protest of FFA’s refusal to pay parental leave.Credit:Eddie Jim
“It’s already in the back of my mind that I have to retire at a certain age, not because my body isn’t good enough but because I want to have a family,” 25-year-old defender Laura Alleway said at the time.
In 2016, former Matildas captain Heather Garriock made a claim of discrimination against FFA. The body had refused to reimburse her for the costs associated with taking a full-time carer to the US to look after her 11-month-old daughter while on a 2013 tour in the US. A tribunal stated while the FFA’s refusal could be seen as “mean-spirited and inflexible”, it was not discriminatory.
In 2019, the collective bargaining agreement that saw the Matildas reach pay parity with the Socceroos stipulated that their parental leave policy would be “reviewed and upgraded”.
Heather Garriock, now non-executive director of Football Federation Australia, made a claim of discrimination against the body in 2016.Credit:Getty
In July 2022, the policy was updated. Football Australia said the policy adhered to the parental leave rules laid out by FIFA. The association didn’t supply details of the agreement but said the policy supported players’ pregnancies, parental commitments and the return of players to the game. Football Australia also declined to comment on FIFA’s decision on Gunnarsdóttir.
The financial support for re-integration into the game makes a key difference. Matildas midfielder Katrina Gorry spent 75 per cent of her wage in 2021 on babysitters and travel for her daughter Harper, she told The Canberra Times in an interview last year.
Netball Australia, a long-time standard-bearer of robust parental leave conditions, updated its policy in 2022 and boosted paid parental leave for primary carers from eight to 18 weeks. Travel costs are covered for children under two and a support person for primary carers and secondary carers receives six weeks’ paid leave.
Gunnarsdóttir initially returned to Lyon after her pregnancy but moved to Italy’s Juventus lat year after captaining Iceland at Euro 2022.
News, results and expert analysis from the weekend of sport sent every Monday. Sign up for our Sport newsletter.
