U.S. Women's Soccer Team Sues U.S. Soccer for Gender Discrimination

[WeekiWater]

Twenty-eight members of the world champion United States women’s soccer team significantly escalated their long-running fight with the country’s soccer federation over pay equity and working conditions, filing a gender discrimination lawsuit on Friday.

The suit, in United States District Court in Los Angeles, comes only three months before the team will begin defense of its Women’s World Cup title at this summer’s tournament in France. In their filing and a statement released by the team, the 28 players described “institutionalized gender discrimination” that they say has existed for years.

The discrimination, the athletes said, affects not only their paychecks but also where they play and how often, how they train, the medical treatment and coaching they receive, and even how they travel to matches.

NYT

[erpowers]

1. I Do Not Support the Lawsuit

I do not see this as a gender issue. At least it is not gender discrimination. The women get paid less because they bring in less money. According to the article the prize pool for the 2018 Men's World Cup was $400 million while the prize pool for the women's World Cup will be $30 million. You cannot expect to get paid the same as the men when your prize pool is less than one-tenth of the men's prize pool. I believe these prize pools are based on the amount of money each World Cup brings in to FIFA. According to information from an article written by Dwight Jaynes, the 2011 Women's World Cup earned about $73 million while the 2010 Men's World Cup earned about $4 billion. The 2011 women's prize pool was $10 million, which was 13% of the money earned. The 2010 men's prize pool was $348 million which was 9% of the money earned.

There some real problems that the women have had to deal with and still have to deal with, but those problems are being fixed. The female players should focus on trying to other issues not related to pay.

https://www.nbcsports.com/northwest/world-cup/equal-pay-womens-world-cup-players-seriously