By Nico Espinola Posted April 27, 2016
Recently five USWNT players (Hope Solo, Carli Lloyd, Becky Sauerbrunn, Alex Morgan, and Megan Rapinoe) filed wage complaints to the federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission against U.S. Soccer. This complaint is due to the difference in pay between US men’s players and women’s players.
There really is quite a difference in pay between the men and the women. The men were awarded $2.5 million for just making it to the World Cup while the women earned $1.8 million for winning the World Cup. The women earned that much for winning the Women’s World Cup despite the fact that Germany was awarded $35 million when they won the Men’s World Cup in 2014.
While the men earn much more for the World Cup and bonuses, the women receive a full-time salary of up to $72,000, and to add to that they also usually receive hundreds of thousands in bonuses.
“The women have without dispute vastly outperformed the men,” their attorney Jeffrey Kessler told the New York Times, “not just on the playing field but economically for the USSF. The women have generated all the money in comparison with the men.”
Kessler is right that the women are outperforming the men on the pitch because of the fact that they continue to play well in tournaments and even won the most recent Women’s World Cup, but the problem with that is women’s sports worldwide aren’t as popular as the men’s sports. There is nothing wrong with women’s sports and it is good that women have the opportunity to play, but it just isn’t as popular as men’s sports that make more money.
Over 3.2 billion people watched the 2014 Men’s World Cup, and just a billion alone of that viewed the final match. In the Women’s World Cup, only 764 million people tuned in throughout the entire tournament. And while the Women’s final match may have broken the record for the most watched soccer game in US history, it still only attracted 25.4 million viewers in the US. It’s incomparable how much more popular men’s soccer is in comparison to women’s.
One might argue that since the men and women are doing the same job they should be paid the same, but they really aren’t doing the same job. They may be playing the same sport but that doesn’t make it the same job. If it were the same job then both the men and the women would be playing in the same leagues and on the same national teams which clearly isn’t the case and nor should it be.
In addition, the women agreed to get paid a guaranteed amount while the men chose to be paid differently.
The fact is that the players for the USWNT are not paid as much as the players on the men’s team. Whether they should be paid equally is something that will soon be decided since the complaints have only been filed recently. The women have played much better than the men have but yet they aren’t paid nearly the same amount. The women should have their pay increased a certain amount, but in reality, their salaries shouldn’t be the same as the men’s because men’s sports are more popular than women’s sports and generate more money worldwide.
