From today’s New York Times:
For American soccer fans, the juxtaposition was hard to ignore: the United States women’s team winning a record fourth World Cup championship in France, its men’s counterpart falling to its bitter rival Mexico hours later in a regional championship in Chicago.
The two results Sunday were not a mere collision of games: they also highlighted a contentious battle about pay equality featuring the men’s teams and women’s teams, the different media and financial ecosystems in which they compete, and the often unequal rewards for success for male and female athletes. All of it was brought to the fore again by the women’s team’s latest world championship, and by the chants of “Equal Pay!” that serenaded the players after they won.
In recent years, that fight for pay equality has been the women’s team’s calling card. The players contend they are paid less by the United States Soccer Federation than the men — sometimes tens of thousands of dollars or more for top players in a given year — and that the situation has persisted for years even as the women’s team has collected more trophies and begun to produce more revenue than the men. U.S. Soccer has welcomed the team’s success — Sunday’s title was the team’s second in a row — even as it has challenged the players’ math, arguing that the situation is complicated by a compensation structure negotiated by each team that pays the men and women differently.
But the women’s players, who include some of the most prominent female athletes in the world, have pressed their argument in interviews and on social media and, most recently, in a gender discrimination federal court. On Sunday, bathing in the crowd’s adoration and set to cash in on bonuses of more than $250,000 each, one of their captains turned the screws again.
Read the complete article here.