Hail to the (Underpaid) Champs

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/08/opinion/uswnt-world-cup-soccer-pay.html

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The American women won their fourth World Cup yesterday, and if you haven’t seen Rose Lavelle’s goal yet, I recommend taking a minute to watch it.

Most of the attention today is on the team’s 2-0 win over the Netherlands in the final. But whether or not you’re a sports fan, you’ve also probably heard about the dispute between the players and the United States Soccer Federation over pay. The women’s team earns much less than the American men’s team, and the players have filed a lawsuit over the gap. The lawsuit also accuses the federation, which is known as U.S. Soccer, of providing the women with subpar facilities, coaching resources and medical treatment. At the end of yesterday’s match, the crowd in France was chanting, “Equal pay!”

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U.S. Soccer has defended the disparities by arguing that the men’s team brings in more revenue. But there are two holes in that argument.

First, it hasn’t been true recently. As Rachel Bachman of The Wall Street Journal reported last month, “From 2016 to 2018, women’s games generated about $50.8 million in revenue compared with $49.9 million for the men, according to U.S. Soccer’s audited financial statements.”

Second, female athletes have suffered decades — centuries, really — of discrimination. Until the 1970s, high schools and colleges fielded few female teams, and those teams received far fewer resources. Girls who wanted to play sports were often told — by their parents, teachers and friends — that it wasn’t their place to do so. And while this discrimination has receded, it certainly has not disappeared.

Given this legacy, the right thing for U.S. Soccer to do is to fix the disparity in pay and other resources. Even though the men’s team has bought in more revenue historically, the men and women haven’t been competing on a level playing field, as the saying goes. One of the reasons that women’s sports have received less attention and brought in less money is the long history of discrimination.

Instead of righting that historical wrong, U.S. Soccer is perpetuating it.

For more …

The women’s World Cup team is “the most American thing we’ve got going right now,” Lauren Peace writes today in The Times.

Sarah Todd, in Quartz: “In an age when too many women are still told that the secret to getting paid fairly is to ‘lean in’ and stay strong in salary negotiations, the US women’s soccer team offers a timely reminder that equal pay isn’t an individual issue — it’s a collective one.”

Emily Ryall, of the University of Gloucestershire, writing recently in The Times: “In the early 20th century, tens of thousands of people would turn up to watch women play soccer in England, after they filled the gap in sporting entertainment when most eligible men were abroad fighting in World War I. Then the nation’s official governing body, the Football Association, ruled that soccer wasn’t suitable for women. Almost overnight, women’s soccer was outlawed.”

David Berri, an economist at Southern Utah University, writing about male and female basketball pay in Forbes: “The NBA pays its players about 50% of league revenue. It appears, when we look at what we know about WNBA revenue and salaries, that the league’s players are receiving less than 25% of the revenue.”

If you just want to read more about yesterday’s match, try The Ringer, Sports Illustrated or The Times. The American men’s team also had a match yesterday; it lost to Mexico, 1-0, in a regional championship.

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