From today’s Washington Post:
The tipping point may have been the sixth goal. Or the seventh. Or the 13th, which turned out to be the last goal scored in the U.S. women’s national team’s handy defeat of Thailand in their first World Cup game.
Whichever goal it was that fans thought should have been the last for ecstatic celebration by the likes of Megan Rapinoe and Alex Morgan on Tuesday, the debate over the players’ sliding, kicking and group hugging drew attention to another issue: the 38 cents on the dollar that the women are paid compared to the men’s team.
On International Women’s Day in March, all 28 members of the women’s team filed a class-action gender discrimination lawsuit against the U.S. Soccer Federation, alleging they do the same job as the men’s team in exchange for lower wages and inferior working conditions. The men’s national team has never won a world title and did not qualify for last year’s World Cup.
The women have been fighting for fair pay for years. Five of them filed a wage-discrimination complaint in 2016 with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, the federal agency that enforces civil-rights laws in the workplace. Some of them then made the rounds on major television networks to plead their case.
Read the complete article here.