(Football news) The United States Women’s National football team is a cultural force to say the least and in the last five years, they have played the role of activists in a legal battle against U.S Soccer on charges against discrimination. Having recently won a bronze at the Tokyo Olympics, a disappointment by their own high standards, there is an end of an era vibe with the core of the team featuring the likes of Megan Rapinoe, Alex Morgan, Carli Lloyd and Becky Sauerbrunn well into their 30’s. However, if the battles on the pitch may be coming to an end after an illustrious career, the fight in the courtroom is very much underway.
The issue is fairly straightforward: The USWNT are underpaid, given their contributions and success in the sport as compared to the USMNT (U.S Men’s National Team) who failed to qualify for the last World Cup, let alone win it. The public opinion is on the side of the USWNT, who believe that they should get a ‘higher pay’ for their unparalleled success on the international stage, but the unfortunate fact is that they are fighting a losing battle so far. The obvious villain in this story is U.S Soccer, who have chosen to pay an estimated $19 million in legal fees fighting to prove why the USWNT does not deserve equal pay, rather than use the funds to resolve the issue.
However, it’s important to note that there are more intricacies involved than what meets the eye. There is a significant disparity in the prize money awarded to men’s and women’s competition in FIFA tournaments, a factor that the U.S Soccer has no control over. The unfortunate reality of the situation is also that women’s football competitions simply don’t generate as much revenue as the men’s tournaments, which means that in order for both the sexes to be paid equally, it’s the men who would have to take a pay cut. Another very important factor that is overlooked is that some USMNT players earn millions of dollars through club contracts, for example: Christian Pulisic earns $11.5 million from Chelsea every year. This gives the players leverage while negotiating national team contracts as their dependency on that source of income is significantly less compared to the USWNT. The men’s club football leagues in Europe have existed for nearly 150 years and the Major League Soccer for over two decades. Simply put, the finances involved in these competitions cannot be matched by the less mature club competitions for women.
Moreover, the contracts offered to the USWNT offer pay, benefits and bonuses that run into six figures, giving them unparalleled financial security which has meant that they earned full salary despite not kicking a ball in 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic, while the men didn’t earn anything. However, this has not stopped U.S Soccer’s own sponsors from advocating equal pay demands. In 2019, Procter & Gamble used a full page advertisement in a Sunday’s edition of New York Times with the message, “Inequality is about more than pay and players. It’s about values.” It has reflected badly on the organization that irrespective of the wages, there was a gross disparity on the money spent on airfare and hotel rooms, a matter that was recently settled by the USWNT and U.S Soccer relating to travel, hotel accommodations, venue selection and staff size.
Legally, it seems that U.S Soccer has the edge over USWNT and it’s likely that the judgement will go in their favour. Judge Klausner has openly rejected USWNT’s legal theory, saying “comparing what each team would have made under the other team’s CBA is untenable in this case because it ignores the reality that the MNT and WNT bargained for different agreements, which reflect different preferences, and that the WNT explicitly rejected the terms they now seek to retroactively impose on themselves.” He also claimed that on a cumulative and average per game basis, the USWNT earned more than the USMNT.
The United States Women’s National team might possibly be the best in the world and it's without a doubt that they deserve higher pay which would reflect their accomplishments, contributions and promotion of the sport. Time will tell if they succeed in their pursuit of equal pay, an issue that should not be a topic of discussion in 2021 to say the least.
