A few weeks ago, the United States Women's National Team elected five of their most prominent players to represent them in a group lawsuit against U.S. Soccer for unequal pay. At first I rolled my eyes when I heard about it and thought, "Oh great, something else that offends us." But then I watched a video Hope Solo shared on her Facebook page, and I realized this was a bigger problem than I realized.
Hope Solo, Megan Rapinoe, Becky Sauerbrunn, Alex Morgan and Carli Lloyd were the figureheads to file a lawsuit to demand equal pay. According to Good Morning America in their conversation with the lawyer next to the above named women, "U.S. soccer made over 16 million from the USWNT, whereas the mens team caused a $2 million loss." I mean, does that make any sense?
I'm not overly expressive about the whole gender pay gap, but as we see the men's team playing, they are a very good team, but they have not had the same results. The women's team just won the World Cup, and they are the reigning Olympic champions. They deserve to be paid like the champions they are. The mere fact that they get paid four times less than the men's team makes me upset, I looked at news articles and this one part jumped out at me: "Time after time, the women have knocked down the pillars used to support a number of long-standing prejudices.
Women are told their games don’t draw television viewers compared to the men, yet 26.7 million Americans tuned in to last summer’s World Cup final, a record number to watch a soccer game — any soccer game — in this country. (To put that figure in perspective, it exceeds the number that watched the 2015 NBA Finals championship game featuring Stephen Curry and LeBron James, the two most popular players in the league.) More than 760 million people watched the Women’s World Cup worldwide, joined by another 86 million who viewed online. Critics say women don’t put fans in the seats, yet attendance for the 2015 Women’s World Cup in Canada more than tripled that of the 2014 Sochi Winter Olympic Games."
I've heard the argument that the stadiums aren't filled with the women's team, and they are with the men. I understand that the men's team is very good, but as the sketch from Comedy Central (shared on my Facebook from Hope Solo), the men's team is great, but this is an investment in their teams. The women have proved their worth and now its time to show these women that we appreciate their sacrifices and bridge the pay gap.
