This week, it has been announced that five members of the women's national soccer team have filed a complaint with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission against U.S. Soccer, citing gross wage disparity. The women state that they make only 40 percent of what the men's soccer team makes, despite winning three world championships and four Olympic titles. According to the New York Times, a player on the men's team earns $5,000 for a loss in a friendly game and up to $17,625 for a win, while the women only get about $1,350 for a win and nothing for a loss. Title IX is supposed to pave the way to equality for women, but this pay disparity is in no way fair.
Being a former female athlete, I am not OK with this. This isn't just about soccer, but about all sports. I know from personal experience that women train just as hard as their male counterparts, but receive far less recognition. That's what this is about. The women's national team is making far less money than the men, and though U.S. Soccer states that that is because of the lack of viewers for female sports, the emphasis is on the fact that female athletes are not getting the recognition they deserve. And this starts at a young age.
From childhood, kids are conditioned that boys are to be the athletes. And when girls decide they want to play sports too, they are not usually given the same treatment. In my life, I've faced my own discrimination in sports. I played softball for 13 years, and never once in that time did I feel like I was getting the same opportunities as the boys on the baseball teams. Little League Baseball got better equipment and uniforms, and if their fields were in use, there were times that softball practices got bumped to make way for them. In middle school, we were forced to wear the baseball team's old uniforms, left over from when they got brand new ones. Our coach fought for us, and the athletic director told him that we should be happy with what we were given. The issue was that boys' and girls' bodies are very different -- mens' shirts are restrictive and pants have so much extra material that it makes it difficult to run. That same team was further discriminated against by the baseball team -- they told us our sport was easy and that they would destroy us if given the chance. So we challenged them to a game and they balked, saying that they would hurt us. We finished that season undefeated, winning 90 percent of our games by a 10-run margin, and they were at best .500. But we never got any recognition for that, because the school thought us that girls' sports didn't matter. In high school, it was rare to find that same athletic director at a female sports game, but he was usually found at the males'. If it rained, the baseball field's infield was tarped. The softball field was left to flood. There are so many little things that were neglected with the female teams, and I can only speak for my particular sport. But I always knew that if push came to shove and one team would be cut from the school's budget, it would be ours, despite the fact that our record was much better. Because men's sports are more important than women's.
This continues with professional sports. Think about how many times you've heard women's sports talked down to. If you Google "the WNBA is..." the first three things that come up are boring, failing, and gay. Women's sports shouldn't automatically be classified as boring, it shouldn't be assumed that they are failing, and there is absolutely no reason to connect gender identity to athletic ability. There are so many stereotypes against this particular women's league alone, and even more when taking other sports into consideration. This is hurtful to women. We spend so much time talking about treating women equally in the workplace, and this needs to continue on the field, court, or rink as well.
All in all, the women's national soccer team should receive the same wages as the men, if not more, because they are currently the superior team. Women should always be receiving the same pay. And if the issue is viewers, we should support them. This starts with squashing out the stereotypes. Females are just as much athletes as males. We need to stop saying that males are better and that female sports are boring. We need to stop treating girls' rec teams, middle school teams, and high school teams as inferior to the boys'. This negativity will only continue into adulthood, and it hurts the chance of women ever being treated fairly in sports. It's time to make a change.
Female athletes work hard, and they deserve all the same recognition and respect as males.
