There are stories that pop up because I am a soccer fan that are emblamatic of larger issues in our society. At moments like this they even seem to illustrate them more starkly and clearly. Today, in other step in their longer simmering collective bargaining dispute with US Soccer, some of the most prominent members of the US Women’s National Team filed suit with the EEOC alleging pay discrimination. Despite reportedly bringing in more money for US Soccer, the USWNT is payed significantly less than the Men’s team. The USMNT gets payed more than the USWNT even if they lose. If the USWNT loses they don’t even get paid which boggles the mind. This has all been brought to a head by the Olympics this summer where the USWNT will be favorites while the US U-23s didn't even qualify.
There is no rational reason that the women shouldn’t be getting paid as much as the men. And yet here we are. I guess you could try to make the argument that the men might not want to play if they weren’t being paid enough considering how much they make playing professionally. But in reality that is even more reason to pay the women equally. They need the income stream more to continue playing at the highest level. There is also the chicken and egg problem of the fact that US Soccer doesn’t promote the women's team as aggressively as the men’s.
People like to watch winners. That is why Serena Williams is more popular than whoever is the top US men’s tennis player. Meanwhile people were watching with dumb fascination tuesday night watching the possibility that the USMNT might be effectively eliminated from the 2018 World Cup. They managed to avoid that ignominious fate for now in a round where frankly it shouldn’t even have been close.
For all the times that people try to point to other reasons than blatant sexism that women don’t make as much as men in the workplace[the EEOC is where all pay discrimination suits are filed], just remember this story.
On another note, I hate to sully a discussion of the USWNT’s issues with this, but I'm not sure how much interest people would have in two separate soccer stories. A german team posted a picture of their team in blackface. More unbelievably, the initial reaction to the picture, presumably from the team’s supporters, was positive. Instead of what you would expect of WTF someone must be getting fired over this which was the initial reaction in my twitter fead. I couldn’t find any evidence of this team playing professionally at least in the top 2 flights of the Bundesliga so they are likely semi-pro at best. Also the picture is apparently digitally altered so it isn’t as if the team sat down for makeup and none of them objected. The fact that the genesis of the picture was as a show against racism just goes to show how far the world has to go before racism is no longer a problem. Not just in the USA.