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.
