Women accuse U.S. soccer of wage discrimination
World Cup winners say they make as much as 62 percent less than men
Five members of the World Cup-champion U.S. women’s soccer team filed a wage-discrimination action against U.S. Soccer on Thursday, saying women’s players were paid as much as 62 percent less than their male counterparts for the same work.
Using figures from U.S. Soccer’s 2015 financial report, the filing charges that while the women’s team generated millions more in revenue than the men’s team last year, the women continue to be paid less for everything from appearances and wins to sponsorship appearances.
“The numbers speak for them- selves,” said goalkeeper Hope Solo, who has played 15 years with the national team. “We are the best in the world, have three World Cup championships, four Olympic championships and the (men) get paid more to show up than we get paid to win major championships.”
Joining Solo in filing the action were Carli Lloyd, the FIFA world
player of the year; team cocaptain Becky Sauerbrunn; midfielder Megan Rapinoe; and forward Alex Morgan.
How Thursday’s action will affect the team’s preparations for, or participation in, this summer’s Olympic Games wasn’t immediately clear. But the filing is the second major dispute in the past three months between the federation and the players, who are training in Florida for a pair of coming friendlies with Colombia.
In February, U.S. Soccer sued the players union in an attempt to head off a possible strike after a lawyer for the union charged in January that the women were no longer bound by terms of their expired collective bargaining agreement. The team won its third Women’s World Cup last summer in Canada and has won three consecutive Olympic titles, making it the most decorated women’s team in the world.
And its success — including a post-World Cup victory tour that played five games before crowds of more than 32,000 — turned what U.S. Soccer had projected to be $429,000 loss for the fiscal year that ended Thursday into a $17.7 million profit for the two national teams.
The federation is also projecting a net gain of approximately $5 million from the women’s team in fiscal year 2017 and a net loss of $1 million for the men.
“The reality is that this team is more valuable to the USSF than the men’s team has been. That’s what the facts show,” said Jeffrey Kes- sler, co-chairman of Winston & Strawn, the New York law firm representing the women before the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. “They would be justified in asking for more than the men are receiving. But the first step that they are seeking is equal treatment. That should be an easy first step for the USSF to take.”
U.S. Soccer responded to Thursday’s action with a fourparagraph statement in which it took credit for helping build the women’s game but did not directly address any of the issues raised in the filing.
“We are committed to and engaged in negotiating a new collective bargaining agreement that addresses compensation,” the statement said.
The EEOC will investigate the charges made in Thursday’s filing and determine whether the women are due additional compensation. Among the evidence the commission will examine are figures from USSF that show:
The federation pays toptier women’s national team players as much as 62 percent less than it pays comparable players on the men’s side.
In the last fiscal year, women’s national team players were required to play a minimum of 20 games, for which they were paid $3,600 per game. With bonuses based on performance, the maximum a women’s player could earn was $99,000. Meanwhile men can make as much $17,625 per game, depending on the opponent, and as much as $262,320 a year. And if the men’s team loses all 20 games, its players would still earn $1,000 more than would players on an undefeated women’s team.