40 percent. That's the percentage five top female soccer players say they're being paid compared with players for the U.S. men's national team.
Hope Solo, Carli Lloyd, Becky Sauerbrunn, Alex Morgan, and Megan Rapinoe — all key players in the USWNT's World Cup victory last year — filed a formal complaint to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission on March 30.
The players are especially frustrated with a significant wage gap after winning their third World Cup championship last year. U.S. Soccer officials maintain the disparity is actually much smaller.
The New York Times reports:
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 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.” ...
U.S. Soccer officials pushed back forcefully on the players’ claims in a conference call [March 31], citing figures that the federation said showed the men’s national team produced revenue and attendance about double that of the women’s team, and television ratings that were “a multiple” of what the women attract, according to Sunil Gulati, the U.S. Soccer president. A federation spokesman, Neil Buethe, called some of the revenue figures in the players’ complaint “inaccurate, misleading or both.”
Read more at The New York Times.
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