Do Women's Soccer Players Make Less Money
U.S. Soccer and Women's Players Agree to Settle Equal Pay Lawsuit
Under the terms of the agreement, the athletes will receive $24 million and a pledge from the soccer federation to equalize pay for the men's and women's national teams.
Andrew Das has reported on soccer'due south equal pay dispute since 2016.
For half-dozen years, the members of the World Loving cup-winning United States women's soccer squad and their bosses argued nigh equitable treatment of female players. They argued well-nigh whether they deserved the aforementioned charter flights as their male person counterparts and nigh the definition of what constituted equal pay.
Merely the long fight that set key members of the women'southward squad against their bosses at U.S. Soccer ended on Tuesday just every bit abruptly every bit information technology had begun, with a settlement that included a multimillion-dollar payment to the players and a promise by their federation to equalize pay between the men's and women's national teams.
Under the terms of the agreement, the women — a group of several dozen electric current and quondam players that includes some of the earth'southward most pop and decorated athletes — will share $24 million in payments from U.S. Soccer. The bulk of that figure is back pay, a tacit admission that compensation for the men's and women's teams had been unequal for years.
Perhaps more than notable is U.S. Soccer's pledge to equalize pay between the men'due south and women's national teams in all competitions, including the World Loving cup, in the teams' next collective bargaining agreements. That gap was once seen as an unbridgeable divide preventing whatsoever sort of equal pay settlement. If information technology is airtight by the federation in negotiations with both teams, the change could funnel millions of dollars to a new generation of women's national team players.
"It wasn't an easy procedure to become to this point for certain," Cindy Parlow Cone, U.S. Soccer'due south president, said in a telephone interview. "The most important thing here is that we are moving frontward, and we are moving forward together."
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The players' long battle with U.S. Soccer, which is not only their employer only also the sport'due south national governing body, had thrust them to the forefront of a broader fight for equality in women's sports and drawn the support of boyfriend athletes, celebrities, politicians and presidential candidates. In recent years, players, teams and fifty-fifty athletes in other sports — ice hockey Olympic gold medalists, Canadian soccer pros and Westward.N.B.A. players — had reached out to the American soccer players and their marriage for assist as they sought better pay and working atmospheric condition.
Many of those players and teams won major gains — Norway, Commonwealth of australia and the Netherlands are among the countries whose soccer federations have committed to endmost the pay gap between men and women — even as the American players' case dragged on.
"I think information technology was merely extremely motivating to run across organizations and employers acknowledge their wrongdoing, and the states forcing their hand in making it right," said Alex Morgan, a striker and former co-captain of the women's national team. "The domino effect that we helped boot-start — I think we're actually proud of it."
For U.S. Soccer, the settlement is an expensive end to a disharmonize that had battered its reputation, damaged its ties with sponsors and soured its relationship with some of its nigh popular stars, including Morgan, Megan Rapinoe and Carli Lloyd, who retired last year. U.Southward. Soccer was nether no obligation to settle with the women'due south team; a federal judge in 2020 had dismissed the players' equal pay arguments, stripping them of nearly all of their legal leverage, and the players' appeal was not certain to succeed.
Yet for that reason, the settlement represents an unexpected victory for the players: About 2 years after losing in court, they were able to extract not only an 8-figure settlement but likewise a commitment from the federation to enact the very reforms the judge had rejected.
"What we ready out to exercise," Morgan said in a telephone interview, "was to have acquittance of discrimination from U.S. Soccer, and we received that through dorsum pay in the settlement. We gear up out to have fair and equal handling in working atmospheric condition, and we got that through the working conditions settlement. And we set out to have equal pay moving forward for the states and the men's team through U.Due south. Soccer, and we achieved that."
When finalized, the settlement volition resolve all remaining claims in the gender discrimination lawsuit the players filed in 2019. But it came with one crucial condition: It is contingent on the ratification of a new contract between U.Southward. Soccer and the players' union for the women's team. And that process could accept weeks, or even months.
The men'southward and women'south teams have already held articulation negotiating sessions with U.S. Soccer, but to brand the bargain work — the federation is seeking a single commonage bargaining agreement that covers both teams — the men's players will have to agree to share, or surrender, millions of dollars in potential World Loving cup payments from FIFA, world soccer'due south governing body. Those payments, set by FIFA and exponentially larger for the men's World Loving cup than the corresponding women'due south tournament, are at the heart of the equal pay divide.
Cone, a onetime member of the women'south team, said in September that the federation would not sign new commonage bargaining agreements with either team that did not equalize World Loving cup prize money, a position she and the federation cemented in Tuesday'southward agreement. The men's matrimony, whose lawyers have been sitting in on some of the women'south negotiating sessions, made no public statements on Tuesday.
The players clan for the women'due south team congratulated its members and their lawyers "on their historic success in fighting decades of discrimination perpetuated by the U.S. Soccer Federation," but made clear that it planned to hold U.S. Soccer — and past extension the men'south squad — to previous public promises to back up equal pay.
"Moving forrad and tying this settlement with the C.B.A. is important for both groups," Cone said. "Because we all believe in equal pay, and the just mode nosotros can go there — until FIFA equalizes the World Cup prize money — is for the men's team, the women's team and U.S. Soccer to gather and attain an agreement on equalizing it ourselves."
Epitome
The equal pay fight began almost six years ago, when 5 star players filed a complaint with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission accusing U.S. Soccer of wage discrimination. The players — Morgan, Rapinoe, Lloyd, Becky Sauerbrunn and Promise Solo — said they were being shortchanged on bonuses, appearance fees and fifty-fifty meal money while they were in training camps, and contended they earned as lilliputian as 40 percent of what players on the men's national team were paid.
"The numbers speak for themselves," Solo said, though U.South. Soccer immediately disputed them. Men's players, Solo said, "get paid more to just show up than we get paid to win major championships."
Nearly immediately, soccer fans took sides in the fight, cleaving American soccer. The federation briefly argued that the men brought in more money and drew higher television set ratings, and thus deserved higher pay, just presently abased the stance amid public backfire, player fury and a closer reading of equal pay law. The women leveraged their popularity and their social media followings to batter the federation in the court of public opinion.
Depositions as the legal example moved forrard produced uncomfortable exchanges that the public relations-savvy players weaponized as slogans they sold on T-shirts.
In April 2020, the judge in the women's gender bigotry lawsuit, R. Gary Klausner of the United states District Court for the Central District of California, appeared to resolve the instance in a unmarried devastating ruling. Dismissing the argument that they were systematically underpaid, Klausner ruled that U.Southward. Soccer had substantiated its claim that the women'due south team had really earned more than "on both a cumulative and an average per-game ground" than the men'southward team during the years covered by the lawsuit.
The players vowed to entreatment their defeat, but all seemed lost. A deal over working conditions in December signaled compromise was still possible, and cleared the way for the players' entreatment to motion forward. Only behind the scenes the sides were already making progress toward a settlement.
With Cone working with leaders of the women'south team like Sauerbrunn, the captain and players association president — "We've had a lot of really constructive conversations back and forth," Cone said — the federation'southward leaders and the players hammered out a deal anybody could back up.
In television appearances and interviews and a joint conference call with reporters on Tuesday night, the sides hailed it as a "monumental win" and a "major step forward."
Just non all the players were in that location to celebrate, though. The World Cup veteran Crystal Dunn, a players clan vice president, had to demur; A negotiating session on the new collective bargaining agreement had been scheduled for the same fourth dimension equally the briefing telephone call, and someone had to be at the talks to correspond the team in the next phase of its fight.
Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/22/sports/soccer/us-womens-soccer-equal-pay.html
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