Having played soccer all my life and watching the United States Women’s National Team (USWNT) since I was a kid, you better believe I support the five women who filed a wage-discrimination complaint against the U.S. Soccer Federation. This law suit does not just want equal pay, but also equal treatment for traveling and field conditions as well.
You would think that with soccer, a sport that is heavily influenced on field conditions, this wouldn’t be an issue for a three-time Fédération Internationale de Football Association (FIFA) World Cup winning team, but unfortunately it is.
In December 2015 the USWNT had to cancel a friendly in Hawaii because the field conditions were horrendous. While in Hawaii star midfielder, Megan Rapinoe, tore her ACL, largely believed to be as a result of the field they were on. In the last two years the men soccer team has not played one game on turf, while the women have played 70% of their games on turf. From my own experience I can tell you playing on grass is safer and a much more pleasant experience than playing on artificial turf.
This disparity reaches beyond the field to other areas such as travel. The men’s team receives $75 a day for travel expenses while the women, just $60. Why would there even need to be a difference?
According to a New York Times article by Carli Lloyd, each year the US men’s and women’s soccer teams each play a minimum of 20 friendly matches. The top five players on the men’s team makes $406,000 a year while the top five women are guaranteed only $72,000. Fivethirtyeight.com states the women get a bonus of $1,350 for each of the 20 friendly matches they win. For the men to receive bonuses, they can lose every match and still receive $4,000, just for showing up.
For the women to get a bonus in the World Cup they have to win the whole tournament. When the men are entered in the World Cup they get a bonus for each point earned, and $5,500 for each group-stage match for which they were rostered. Also, for making the World Cup roster men get $69,000 while the women get $15,000. The men have never even come close to winning one world cup!
Oh yeah, and for the people who say no one watches women’s sports, when the women won their third world cup title they drew the highest American television rating for soccer in HISTORY and generated $17.7 million in revenue, according to a financial report published by U.S. Soccer.
What makes all of these numbers worse is according to Lloyd, in 2017 the men are predicted to lose almost $1 million while the women will generate a profit of $5.2 million.
Just looking at the numbers, it is evident that there is obvious wage discrimination happening with our USWNT. I hope that the U.S soccer federation will come to their senses and give the female players what they deserve, fair and equal treatment to their male counterparts.
