The US Women’s National Team’s Performance Supports Their Demand For Equal Pay
The US Women's National Team has been a dominant force in soccer for decades and their most recent World Cup performance is further proving their need for equal pay.
The US Women's National Team (USWNT) players are paid $0.38 on the dollar compared to their male counterparts, yet their performance on the world stage is far superior. On March 8, 2019, several members of the team filed a lawsuit against the US Soccer Federation declaring intentional gender discrimination relating to the pay they received amongst other things. This World Cup performance along with the team's history does nothing but support their demand.
To start, let's take a quick glimpse at the record of the USWNT. The team has managed to capture three FIFA World Cup trophies (hopefully soon to be four) of the seven that have been available to win. In addition to that, they have four Olympic gold medals out of the six that have been completed for since women's soccer became an Olympic sport in 1996. This is compared to the men's team who hasn't won a gold medal at the Olympics since 1904.
If you cut to the current World Cup, the superiority of the USWNT is still evident. If you didn't watch the opening game or haven't read the news articles, the US Women's National Team (USWNT) scored 13 goals within the game against Thailand. They broke the World Cup Record. They had the largest margin of victory ever and shut out Thailand completely. Several players (Pugh, Lavelle, Mewis, and Horan) scored their first ever World Cup goals while the goals of other players (Rapinoe and Lloyd) continued to demonstrate their prowess on the field.
To top it off, Alex Morgan scored five goals. But the biggest takeaway here is that the 13 goals scored by the USWNT were more than the US Men's National Team has scored in the last four World Cups COMBINED, including the 2018 Cup, which they failed to qualify for.
Despite being a global powerhouse who is favored to win the World Cup, the team has never won two back to back trophies and they're coming off of a rocky finish at the Olympics. The tournament is just getting started and the US has a long, potentially challenging lineup of games ahead. I think that the pressure is on the USWNT for this tournament because of the point they are setting out to prove to US Soccer. But regardless of the results of this World Cup, the USWNT record throughout several decades supports the idea that they are objectively the best team internationally and their pay should reflect that.
There Needs To Be More Female World Cup Commentators, We Deserve Representation
It's 2018. This should not be the first time that women commentate a men's FIFA World Cup Match.
British journalist Vicki Sparks became the first woman to commentate a men's FIFA World Cup match for BBC.
She is not alone, former US Women's National Team midfielder Aly Wagner became the first female game analyst on American television when she commentated a World Cup Match for Fox Sports while German Claudia Neumann and Swede Hanna Marklund did the same in their respective countries.
However, all of these women were met with criticism from people who believe that women should not be commentating men's matches as well as patronization from men who believed they were clueless.
Former defender Jason Cundy was highly criticized by the media when he complained that women's voices as too "high-pitched" for soccer and that he "found it tough to listen." While former French national team player Patrice Evra was criticized for his misogyny and shock that Juventus forward Eniola Aluko understood basic concepts of soccer.
I believe that this blatant sexism is exactly the reasons that there need to be more women commentating men's soccer matches. Women are just as capable of understanding and analyzing soccer as men are, in fact, the commentary of Aly Wagner and her partner Derek Rae has been praised as "the tournament's best commentary."
As both a player and a fan, I have always felt like there is a connotation that men's soccer is, for some reason, better than women's soccer. Maybe it is that fact that nearly everywhere around the world, men's soccer receives more coverage and funding than women's. Maybe it is the fact that many women's soccer leagues are newer than the leagues of their male counterparts. Whatever the reason it needs to end. Especially in the United States, a nation that has seen its women's national team win three FIFA World Cups and four Olympics golds, while its men's team has failed to win one of either, yet fails to truly support women's soccer.
Aly Wagner was recently quoted as saying "I think it's really important to have men and young boys and teenagers…hear women's voices in the sports world on the level of analyst…as long as it's good analysis." I completely agree.
There need to more female commentators at all levels of soccer and other sports to show that, despite the vast gender inequality, women can work and succeed in the field of sports journalism. And the only way to get women accepted as sports commentators is to make it the new norm.