 Did you know that professional female soccer players are getting paid around $40,000 per season, yet male soccer players are getting showered in $250,000 to $300,000 per season? Yep, it's true. The U.S. Women's National soccer team won the World Cup this year and got paid 30 million dollars, meanwhile, the World Cup for professional men's soccer, in 2018, gave 38 million dollars to the winning team, France. In addition to pay, their complaints include worse playing fields, lack of private flights and less promotion than the men's team. According to ESPN “The U.S. women have been fighting for equality for some time. In 2016, five high-profile members of the USWNT -- Carli Lloyd, Hope Solo, Alex Morgan, Rapinoe and Becky Sauerbrunn -- filed a complaint against the United States Soccer Federation (commonly referred to as U.S. Soccer) with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. The complaint remains pending in California.”
When the women returned with their second consecutive world championship and fourth overall, it seemed like they were selling themselves short by simply asking to be treated the same. The men have never made it past the quarterfinals of their World Cup and didn’t even qualify for the last one. According to the Los Angeles Times, “the women’s lawsuit and the equal pay argument focus largely on bonuses and other issues related to national team games. A player on the U.S. men’s national team can make as much as $17,625 depending on the opponent and the outcome, court documents allege. A women’s player would get about half that for a comparable result.” Many people support Equal Pay for women soccer, including many US soccer followers, other women's teams, and the US Men's professional team. The U.S. men's team issued a statement in support of the USWNT, saying, "The members of the United States National Soccer Team Players Association once again stand with the members of the world champion Women's National Team in their pursuit of fair compensation for their work as professional soccer players. The USMNT players were not impressed with US Soccer Federation president, Carlos Cordeiro's, letter made public. The Federation downplays contributions to the sport when it suits them. This is more of the same." All of the players on the women's national team are fighting for this and have things to say about it. “Everyone is kind of asking what’s next and what we want to come of all of this,” Megan Rapinoe said hours after the World Cup final. “It’s to stop having the conversation about equal pay. It’s time to sit down with everyone and really get to work.” My opinion on the matter is that equal pay should be enhanced for women's soccer. I absolutely love to play soccer and think its an amazing sport in general. I would like to be somewhat of a soccer player when I get older. I want that generation to be different than the one for soccer now, which includes equal pay and women get treated the same as men. As of right now, all the women on the national team are having to have two jobs while most men are just playing pro soccer and gaining a larger revenue than the women. The USWNT deserves to be paid the same as men, they are both great teams who are completely equal and payment should be fair. Many other women teams have this problem for soccer but are fixing it. According to Los Angeles Times, “Norway figured that out 18 months ago when its federation became the first to agree to equal pay for its men’s and women’s teams, with the men agreeing to take a cut to make that happen.” So why doesn't the US federation make this leap and create a big jump for the next generation of US soccer stars? Story by Lily Severance Comments are closed.
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