The United States Men’s soccer players have declared support for their women counterparts over their equal pay lawsuit filed against U.S. Soccer Federation.
The men’s soccer team made their support official on Friday, July 30 via an amicus brief. In the brief, the soccer players stressed that their women counterparts deserved more than equal pay but higher compensations.
Recall that the Women’s soccer national team has been in a legal battle with the U.S. Soccer Federation over the inequality in the payment of salaries. The women believe that their male counterparts are well taken care of than them.
They argued that even though they are being looked down on due to their gender, they have brought more soccer honors to the country than their male counterparts.
The US women’s soccer team are far more successful than their male counterparts. For instance, US men’s soccer players have never played in a FIFA World Cup final, but the women have not only played in the final, but they have won the tournament four times, apart from finishing runners-up once, and third place on three different occasions.
They are also soccer Olympics Gold medalists on four different occasions, a height their men’s counterparts can only hope for. The women’s soccer team just qualified for the Tokyo 2020 Olympics semi-final round after beating the Netherlands women’s soccer team via penalty. While the US men’s soccer team is nowhere to be found.
Aside from all the aforementioned, it is the right of the women’s soccer team to earn the same salary as their male counterparts under the US Equal Pay Act. Hence, the women’s team wants the U.S. Soccer Federation to pay 66 million dollars in damages for breaching the act.
However, U.S. District Judge R. Gary Klausner gave a judgment that favored the US soccer federation, noting that the US women’s soccer players earn more compensations than their men counterparts. The women’s soccer team had to appeal the judgment.
In US men’s soccer players’ brief supporting the lawsuit, the players criticized the soccer federation for treating the women’s soccer players as second-class citizens.
“The United States Soccer Federation markets the United States Men’s and Women’s National Teams under the slogan, ‘One Nation. One Team.’,” the brief said.
“But for more than thirty years, the Federation has treated the Women’s National Team players as second-class citizens, discriminating against the women in their wages and working conditions and paying them less than the Men’s National Team players, even as U.S. Soccer has enjoyed a period of extraordinary financial growth.
“The Federation has never offered or provided equal pay to the women, and the district court’s holding to the contrary cannot be squared with the facts.”
The men’s team said the U.S. District Judge relied on “oversimplified math” when he decided that the women were paid more than the men by adding up the compensation paid to the men and women and dividing it by the total number of games.
“A woman’s rate of pay is not equal to a man’s if the woman must consistently achieve better outcomes merely to get to the same place,” the brief added.
“If the women had won fewer games, or if the district court had analyzed a more representative period of the men’s performance as a point of comparison, the per-game disparity would have been obvious, glaring, and undeniable…
“Given the Federation’s dramatically improved financial circumstances, the women were due at least triple the compensation provided for in the men’s agreement.”
