“They’d say I hustled / Put in the work / They wouldn’t shake their heads and question how much of this I deserve / What I was wearing / If I was rude / Could all be separated from my good ideas and power moves? / … I’m so sick of running as fast as I can / Wondering if I’d get there quicker / If I was a man”
― Taylor Swift, “The Man” (2019)
Recently, the 4x World Champion and 4x Olympic Champion U.S. Soccer Women’s National Team settled their long-awaited “equal pay lawsuit” with U.S. Soccer. With this agreement, U.S. Soccer is finally acknowledging that pay and reparations between the men’s and women’s teams have been unequal for a long time. The terms of this agreement are leading to a group of current and former players to share $24 million of payments from U.S. Soccer as well as a promise from U.S. Soccer to continue to equalize pay between the national teams in all competitions.
This is a huge deal. Female soccer players have been fighting for years to get this equal pay and have come up short handed until now. The first time they went to court for the lawsuit, the judge wouldn’t raise the women’s salary because they “technically get paid more since they won more games than the men,” but they don’t get anything if they lose. The men get paid more for winning, and they even get paid for losing, but because the women were winning so many games, they still ended up earning more money on a technicality, so the judge refused the lawsuit. But, why was it okay for the women to get different treatment than the men? Clearly, the team was amazing, why were they getting punished?
The pay gap is something that women of all occupations experience, and something that continues to have people denying its existence. Yes, the women’s soccer team was technically getting paid more, but comparatively, they were getting paid less for more work. The U.S. Women’s National Team has gone so far in their success and representation of the country that it is only fair that they should receive accurate compensation, and I am so happy that they finally got it.
Of course, when this victory was announced, U.S. Soccer advertised it as a win for them as well, as if they couldn’t have made this happen sooner. For years, these women have been simply asking for equal pay; to be compensated rightfully for all their hard work. They weren’t asking for anything special or glorious or anything more than they deserved. While they had to fight hard to get fair compensation, the men’s national team just had it handed to them. Clearly, it has nothing to do with how well their team played as the women’s team is easily one of (if not the) best in the world.
For as long as I have been alive, I have been taught that women have to go the extra mile just to get a small thing they deserve. No one has our backs except ourselves, which is why it is so important to keep fighting. The success and hard work of the U.S. Women’s National Team finally paid off and is going to be seen as a motivational inspiration for young women everywhere.