After World Cup Upset: Untangling Misconceptions in Equal Pay Conversations
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Unfortunately, the U.S. Women's Soccer National Team (USWNT) was knocked out of the 2023 Women's World Cup in Australia and New Zealand, and it caused a firestorm of debates about equal pay at tables across the country. Led by the likes of soccer legends Megan Rapinoe and Alex Morgan, the team struggled and had its earliest exit in the history of the Women's World Cup. Favored to win the tournament, USWNT faced criticism of their play - and then of their well-known win for equal pay. And there are many lessons for Human Resources professionals.
Sites, like the BroBible, and conservatives on social media with their messages of "Go woke, go broke," are completely misunderstanding the deal the women won for all U.S. sports. They are saying they should not have earned the settlement they did because they lost this one game. HR Exchange Network has done research to put these arguments to rest, sadly along with the women's hopes for World Cup glory in 2023:
Setting the Stage for the Equal Pay Fight
The USWNT has won four World Cups, four Olympic gold medals, and medaled in every major international competition except for the 2016 Olympics, according to Vox. The U.S. Men's Soccer National Team (USMNT) has had a different history.
In fact, the USMNT has never won a World Cup, and it has not even gotten past the quarter finals in 90 years, according to NBC Sports. There's no question that USMNT has improved, especially in recent years. Now, many of the players are sought after abroad and playing in the most competitive leagues in the world on the club level. Still, however, they have not come close to the women's success.
For years, the women questioned the fact that the men's team experienced better treatment and had more resources allocated to them. Think charter flights and more visibility. Frankly, despite the women's winning ways, the men simply got more attention from U.S. Soccer.
What Was the Deal for Equal Pay?
In 2019, after winning the World Cup, many recall the fans chanting, "Equal pay!" The players listened, and the women filed a gender discrimination lawsuit against U.S. Soccer. The settlement in 2022 required a new collective bargaining agreement that would include both the men's and women's teams. To start, U.S. Soccer paid $24 million to the women to share among themselves. The bulk of this money was for back pay, and it serves as a symbol of admission that the women had never been paid fairly, according to The New York Times.
In addition to this one-time payment, U.S. Soccer promised to be equitable moving forward. Essentially, the organization would equalize pay between the men’s and women’s national teams in all competitions, including the World Cup, according to The New York Times at the time of the settlement:
"That gap was once seen as an unbridgeable divide preventing any sort of equal pay settlement. If it is closed 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."
One federal judge in 2020 had dashed the hopes of the women, which made this victory all the sweeter. However, they still had to convince the men to sign a single collective bargaining agreement, which meant they would surrender potentially more money that they would receive from FIFA, soccer's world governing body, to share with the women. FIFA pays based on how far a team gets in the tournament. The men's team backed their women counterparts - and together they made history.
To provide perspective and help demonstrate how big of a deal this is: PBS reports that the American women received a $110,000 bonus for winning the 2019 World Cup, whereas if the U.S. men would have won their 2018 World Cup tournament, they would have earned $407,000. And the USMNT, despite having participated in every World Cup tournament from 1990 to 2014, did not even qualify for the tournament in 2018.
Making History
The Women's Players Association (PA) became a hallmark for this kind of fight for equality. Other women's sports leagues, including the Women's National Basketball Association (WNBA) called on them for help in strategizing their own negotiations. Then, Congress passed The Equal Pay for Team USA bill in response to U.S. Soccer's settlement on the eve of Title IX's 50th anniversary. Title IX is the historic civil rights legislation that prohibits sex-based discrimination at school or in any other education program that receives federal funding. This bill was signed into law by President Joe Biden at the start of 2023.
ESPN provided more context after Congress acted:
"Over the past decade, most Olympic sports in the U.S. have met USOPC standards regarding equal compensation. But there remained inequities between the men's and women's soccer teams - whose roles in international events, such as the World Cup, resulted in unequal pay structures and different oversight - that led legislators to seek to enshrine those standards into law."
In a bitterly divided country, this bill had unanimous, bipartisan support in the Senate. It's a question of fairness. It's a lesson for many. During the fight, the women players kept reminding people that this was about equal pay for equal work. Rapinoe, who announced her retirement at the end of the 2023 World Cup run, famously summed up the biggest takeaway of this fight for justice:
"To every girl out there, to every boy out there, who watches this team, who wants to be on this team, or just wants to live their dream out, you are not less just because you’re a girl. You are not better just because you are a boy."
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