Parker Rose
Opinion Columnist
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It’s time to stop making excuses. For far too long, women have been the victims of economic injustice by way of wage gaps and lack of benefits compared to their male counterparts. Many would like to believe that this is an issue that will solve itself over time, or quietly fade away from view.
The loud and uncomfortable truth, however, is that this issue will continue to exist until we take forceful and meaningful action. It will follow us everywhere we go and recently, it followed us to a once unexpected arena: the soccer field.
Just 93 days before the first match of the World Cup, on International Women’s Day, all 28 members of the women’s team filed a class action lawsuit against their employer, the U.S. Soccer Federation, on the grounds that their inferior wages were a form of gender discrimination according to The Washington Post.
When it comes to salaries, women are paid a base of $3,600 per game while men are paid $5,000.
The disparity between bonus amounts is even starker. Members of the women’s team earn a $15k bonus for the World Cup, while members of the men’s team can expect $55k.
U.S. Soccer awarded the men’s team a $5.4 million bonus after it lost the 2014 World Cup, while the women’s team received only $1.7 million when they won the entire tournament in 2015according to The Huffington Post.
The U.S Soccer Federation has responded to lawsuits and uproars about pay disparities in the past by arguing that women’s sports do not generate the same sort of revenue that men’s sports do.
This isn’t true considering that women’s games have been out-earning men’s games for the past three years, as women’s games generated about $50.8 million while the men’s generated $49.9 million according to the Hill.
Moreover, why is the U.S. Soccer Federation is hanging onto the excuse of profitability when they currently have about $150 million in surplus with which to invest in the game?
It is simply untrue that women’s sports is not as profitable as men’s, and it is simply unreasonable to pretend like they aren’t putting in the same amount of time, energy, and commitment as their male counterparts.
It also leads us to ask the most important question amidst the entire controversy: if the economic excuses made by U.S. Soccer Federation do not hold water, then to what do we owe the continuation of these abhorrent pay disparities? Is the U.S. Soccer Federation a band of anti-feminist, misogynistic grumps?
Possibly.
But what’s more plausible is that what is at play is a less explicit and more culturally accepted form of misogyny. The U.S Soccer Federation continues to make excuses for the pay disparities not out of clear-intentioned efforts to degrade feminism or hinder the advancement of women. Rather, they just simply don’t care.
Recognizing the injustices done to women athletes by pay disparities interrupts business as usual (and social hierarchies as usual, some fear) and it’s simply not worth the trouble. U.S. Soccer is most certainly profiting more by paying their female players less, and since the wage gap is so entrenched into our economy it almost seems unnatural to correct it.
U.S. Soccer will continue to do whatever it can to pay women less, expecting advocates to eventually accept that the disparity is a brute fact of nature.
The common attitude of apathy and disrespect for women’s issues such as these is degrading and unacceptable. The U.S. Soccer Federation and other entities like it which have denied women the ability to solve these issues in a civil manner, have given these same women no choice but to resort to profound social action.
When someone tries to take away your voice, the best course of action is to remind them that they can’t. This is why the voices of Megan Rapinoe, all 28 members of the USWNT, and the hordes of their screaming fans matter so much. It’s time to change societal intuitions about what women deserve, and show that we are a force to be reckoned with.
US Soccer Field : the new battlefield for equality
