U.S. women's national soccer playersv ows to continue fight for equal pay despite setback
The mess that is U.S. Soccer continues.
The 28 women of the highly successful U.S. national team have been pounding the drum in a gender discrimination lawsuit against U.S. Soccer since March 2019.
That movement suffered a setback last week.
A California judge dismissed the players' claims that, compared to the players on the U.S. men's national team, they were underpaid.
"This decision was out of left field for us," national team star Alex Morgan said.
One nice thing to come out of all these legal wranglings is seeing the boys stand with the girls.
In the wake of the women's bad news, they were buoyed by the men in a show of support. The men's team sent out a statement shortly after the ruling was made.
"The USMNT players continue to stand with the WNT players in their efforts to secure equal pay," the group said. "For a year and a half, the USMNT players have made proposals to the Federation that would achieve equal pay for the USMNT and USWNT players."
The women were seeking $66 million in damages under the Equal Pay Act.
But the court, in its summary statement, said that the women were paid more than the men on both a cumulative and an average per-game basis than the men during the period in question.
U.S. women's star Megan Rapinoe had a different way of explaining the problem while vowing, along with other stars from the U.S. women's team, to appeal the decision.
"If I earn $1 every time I play and a man earns $3, just because I win 10 games and he only wins three games, and so I make $10 and he made $9, I'm not sure how that's me making more money," Rapinoe said.
U.S. Soccer originally argued that the job of a men's national team player "requires materially different skill and more responsibility" than a women's player, while the men's job also takes place under "materially different work conditions."
When that sentiment received public backlash, U.S. Soccer issued a public apology and began to focus on the difference in the collective bargaining agreements between the men and women being at the root of the difference in pay.
But that walk-back didn't go very far with the women from the national team. They seem to believe that many employers make a blanket distinction between workplace contributions of men and women that may not be fair.
Rapinoe and Morgan vowed to continue the fight with an appeal. And that got support throughout the sports world, particularly from women's advocate and former tennis star Billie Jean King.
"This is a setback, but it is not the end of the fight," King posted on her Twitter account. "The pursuit of equality is a marathon not a sprint, and this lawsuit has generated a meaningful conversation about the treatment of women in sports.
"One ruling does not diminish its impact."
• Twitter: @babcockmcgraw