Equal pay for equal work in sports, too

Viewpoint: Dallas Morning News (excerpted) Female U.S. national soccer players filed a federal wage-discrimination claim against the U.S. Soccer Federation. The filing alleges that the federation pays its men’s team nearly four times more than the women.

Among the figures cited: The women this year would earn $99,000 US apiece if they won 20 friendly matches, the minimum they are required to play. Men, meanwhile, are paid $100,000 each even if they lose all 20. If they won out, they’d receive $263,320.

The action grew out of efforts by the association representing the women’s national team to draw up a new collective bargaining agreement with U.S. Soccer.

But the unequal treatment goes beyond salaries and bonuses. For example, the U.S. women have complained for some time about unsafe field conditions. They are frequently made to play on artificial turf; men generally play on grass.

In U.S. Soccer, particularly, pay comparisons are apples to apples. Men and women do the same job. They play the same number of games with the same amount of practice and travel. Even if U.S. soccer chose to pay players based on the amount of revenue generated, the women would win. They generated $18 million in revenue and profits of $5 million in fiscal 2017; the men brought in $9 million and turned a nearly $1 million loss. The women’s World Cup final last year drew the largest American TV audience ever for soccer.

Paying women less than men for the same work has been illegal in the U.S. for more than a half century. Even so, a wage gap persists. Women who work fulltime in the U.S. earn, on average, 79 per cent of what men earn. And things aren’t improving much. At this rate, the pay gap won’t close for another 100 years.

U.S. Soccer said it is “disappointed” by the complaint and noted its commitment to building the women’s game during the past 30 years. We salute the federation for building a profitable, popular and successful women’s team.

But the only reason the soccer federation continues to pay women less is because they can get away with it. “At what point as a female are we going to keep letting this happen?” player Abby Wambach said earlier this year. The answer must be “no more.”