Written by Andrew Das at New York Times.com
U.S. Soccer, the governing body for the sport in America, pays the members of the men’s and women’s national teams who represent the United States in international competitions. The men’s team has historically been mediocre. The women’s team has been a quadrennial phenomenon, winning world and Olympic championships and bringing much of the country to a standstill in the process.
Citing this disparity, as well as rising revenue numbers, five players on the women’s team filed a federal complaint Wednesday, accusing U.S. Soccer of wage discrimination because, they said, they earned as little as 40 percent of what players on the United States men’s national team earned even as they marched to the team’s third World Cup championship last year. The five players, some of the world’s most prominent women’s athletes, said they were being shortchanged on everything from bonuses to appearance fees to per diems.
The case, submitted to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, the federal agency that enforces civil rights laws against workplace discrimination, is the latest front in the spreading debate over equal treatment of female athletes. A tennis tournament director was forced to resign recently after saying that female players “ride on the coattails of the men,” and the N.C.A.A. has drawn scrutiny for the financial disparities between the men’s and women’s basketball tournaments.
“The numbers speak for themselves,” said goalkeeper Hope Solo, one of the players to sign the complaint. “We are the best in the world, have three World Cup championships, four Olympic championships.” Solo said the men’s players “get paid more to just show up than we get paid to win major championships.”
Solo was joined in the complaint by the co-captains Carli Lloyd and Becky Sauerbrunn, forward Alex Morgan and midfielder Megan Rapinoe.
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