The U.S. Soccer Federation has offered identical contract proposals to the men’s and women’s teams. You would think this would finally bring to an end the “equal pay” crusade of the U.S. Women’s National Team.
And … you would be wrong.
The U.S. Women’s National Team Players Association declared that the offer was nothing more than a publicity stunt and that “bargaining through the media will not bring us any closer to a fair agreement.” U.S. Soccer had said it wanted to align the men’s and women’s teams under a “single collectivity bargaining agreement structure.”
Yes, even the offer of identical contracts is apparently not good enough to count as “equal pay.”
This entire saga has been equal parts miserable and laughable. Players such as Megan Rapinoe made watching the USWNT more difficult by drowning every game in politics. Then the women’s team’s lawsuit against U.S. Soccer was summarily dismissed after it was revealed that the women were, in fact, paid more than the men by U.S. Soccer.
Speaking of publicity stunts, that lawsuit should never have been filed given that the women’s team had specifically negotiated a different pay structure than the men in the first place. But neither logic nor math has been given any space in this discussion by the USWNT, and dismissing identical contracts to the men surely confirms that.
The USWNT isn’t going to let this fictional issue go. The team appealed the dismissal of its lawsuit and evidently isn’t all that interested in negotiating, even when U.S. Soccer is willing to offer everything the team claims to have wanted. Maybe this has always been some cynical ploy for publicity, or maybe players such as Rapinoe have truly deluded themselves into thinking that their ideology is reality. But it has certainly never been a question of “equal pay.”
