Image Credit: U.S. Soccer WNT

As members of the triumphant United States women’s soccer team wore gold medals around their necks celebrating their fourth World Cup victory Sunday afternoon, the sold out crowd at Stade de Lyon erupted in a deafening chant, “Equal pay! Equal pay!”

The 2019 World Cup matches for the United States women were always about more than victory on French soccer fields. Members of the United States women’s team have become not just symbols of athletic grace and superiority; they are powerful examples of what it means to stand up for equality in all forms, particularly equal pay for equal work.

Indeed, a lawsuit filed three months before the tournament, establishes the U. S. women as plaintiffs in for a continuing legal battle which will establish their future salaries and new standards for what ALL women in competitive sports worldwide are paid. The next step in the lawsuit is mediation.

“Everyone is ready for this conversation to move to the next step. We’re done with ‘Are we worth it? Should we have equal pay?’ We put on – every player at this world cup – put on the most incredible show you could ever ask for. We can’t do anything more,” U. S. team co-captain Megan Rapinoe, who won dual honors – the Golden Ball as the tournament’s best player and the Golden Boot as the tournament’s top scorer, said during a post victory press conference.

The mediation hopes to settle a lawsuit filed in March which alleges “institutionalized gender discrimination” by the U.S. Soccer Federation over a period of years. Among the allegations are both pay and working conditions including an argument the women play more games than the men’s team, win more of those games and still get paid less. (1)(2)

The United States women have won four world cups. By contrast, the United States men placed in one World Cup tournament decades ago and did not even qualify for the World Cup tournament last year.

“We very much believe it is our responsibility not only for our team and for future U.S. players, but for players around the world – and frankly women all around the world – to feel like they have an ally in standing up for themselves, and fighting for what they believe in, and fighting for what they deserve and for what they feel like they have earned,” Ms. Rapinoe said when the lawsuit was first filed in March. Her remarks and those of her teammates since have echoed the same sentiment. (2)

One great disparity between men’s and women’s teams are the multi-million dollar bonuses the world soccer governing body pays teams for participation in the World Cup – a pool of $400 million divided between 32 men’s teams vs a pool of $30 million divided between 24 women’s teams. (2)

The lawsuit filed by the soccer stars shines a spotlight on broader pay inequities for women which are rampant across the globe for all educational levels and in most professions. Internationally, women are paid 63 percent of what men earn, according to the World Economic Forum. This pay gap would take 200 years to correct if the pace of change remains at the current level. There is not a single country where women are paid as much as men. Laos, in Southeast Asia, comes closest to parity where women’s wages stand at 91 percent of those paid men. Women in Iraq, Syria and Yemen face the largest pay gaps, with women in those countries earning only 30 percent of men’s wages. (3)

In the United States, even though women are now receiving more college and graduate degrees than men, women make only 80.5 cents on the dollar for the same work performed by white men. On average, women earn less for every single occupation tracked by the Institute for Women’s Policy Research. (4) Women of color generally fall behind white women when wages are compared, with African American women earning 65.4 cents on the dollar and Hispanic women earning 53.8 cents on the dollar.

Georgia women fare better in state-by-state rankings for employment and earnings than several surrounding states and 24th in the nation overall. In Georgia, women 82.6 percent of the salaries earned by men, based on figures from the Institute for Women’s Policy Research. The highest ranking salaries in the nation are paid in the District of Columbia with the states of Maryland, Massachusetts, Connecticut and New York rounding out the top five. The lowest ranking states are Alabama, Louisiana, Idaho and West Virginia, with Mississippi ranking dead last.

A primary root cause for continuing pay inequities is the lack of equal representation for women in the political sphere where laws which could mandate equal pay are passed. Of the 149 countries surveyed by the Global Economic Forum, only 17 currently have women as heads of state. The United States still has a glass ceiling in the Oval Office. Internationally, women comprise 18 percent of cabinet or ministerial posts and 24 percent of legislative posts. (3)

When it comes to women holding political office in legislative bodies at least, the United States falls just below the international average, with women holding 23.7 percent of the seats in Congress, despite 2018 having been a record setting year for the election of women nationwide. Many are surprised to learn Georgia beats both the national and international average, with the 30.5 percent of female legislators. Among the 50 states,  Georgia a ranks 20th nationwide for the percentage of women serving in our General Assembly. (5)

Simply put: when there are more women making laws, laws will provide equal pay protections for all women across all professions. Until laws change for all, women in specific workplaces must hope for court intervention by suing employers who pay them less — following the example of the United States Women’s Soccer team. Lawsuits take time and even though more women are graduating from law schools these days, the courts, particularly at the highest levels of the sate and federal system, are male dominated, usually by older white men who hold lifetime appointments.

Georgia WIN List has as its mission changing the face of power in Georgia by electing  more women to the Georgia General Assembly and statewide office. We are doing our part to train, recruit, endorse and elect women who will WIN office and FLIP seats in 2020. We have been working for almost 20 years to level Georgia’s playing field.

We are newly inspired by the USWNT victory. Equality in all forms for our daughters and granddaughters depends upon continuing the fight. We must PERSIST.  

The 1967 Aretha Franklin version of Otis Redding’s song became an anthem for both the feminist and civil rights movement. These days as women demand equal pay for equal work, we choose to spell the refrain of the 50-year-old anthem a slightly different way:

R-E-$-P-E-C-T.

WIN List Executive Director Melita Easters is a former journalist who last wrote about sports as a features “stringer” for The Macon Telegraph during her college days. Portions of this blog post were published by The Saporta Report last week as a guest column. Sources for various statistics and figures cited are below.

1 – Sports Illustrated  

2 – NYTimes

3 – The Guardian

4 – Institute for Women’s Policy Research

5 – Center for American Women in Politics Retugers University