The United States Women’s Soccer National Team has been one of the most dominant teams in women’s soccer history. With 5 gold, 1 silver, and 1 bronze Olympic medals and 4 FIFA Women’s World Cup titles. The men’s team however, has no Olympic medals or World Cup titles. Yet, the men are getting paid more than the women, when the women are clearly better.
The women have won a medal in all but one of the Olympics they have attended. Recently, they won their 5th gold medal in Paris over the summer. They have also placed in all but one of the World Cups they have attended.
The men however, have never made it past the semifinals in the World Cup. Plus, they made it to the semifinals in the first World Cup in 1930, where there were only 13 teams. For reference, there were 32 teams competing in the 2022 World Cup. The best the men have done in the Olympics, was when they placed 4th in the 2000 Sydney Olympics.
Even after all of the women’s achievements, they are still paid less than the men are. Currently, some organizations are giving equal pay, and some are not.
Equal Pay
None of the women’s international soccer teams have equal pay with their male counterparts. A prime example of this is in the FIFA World Cup.
The winner of the Women’s World Cup in 2023 received $4.3 million from FIFA. The winner of the Men’s World Cup in 2022 received $42 million from FIFA. The last place team for the women received $1.6 million, while the last place men’s team earned $9 million.
Basically, the men are getting more money for getting last place than the winners of the Women’s World Cup. The men get paid more for being the worst than the women get for being the best.
U.S. Soccer has agreed to pay the women and the men equally, except for the World Cup. FIFA controls how much money they pay to teams for their performance in the World Cup. U.S. Soccer agreed to give each team the same amount of money in bonuses.
Instead, what they are doing is taking the winnings of the men’s team and combining it with the winnings of the women’s team. The women won $1.9 million, and the men won $13 million. (They both lost in the same round of the tournament.) U.S. Soccer would pull the money together, give 10% to the youth programs, and give each team $6.7 million. This means that the women were the highest paid team in the World Cup, even though they did not win.
The President of FIFA, Gianni Infantino stated, “Our ambition is to have equality in payments for the 2026 Men’s and 2027 Women’s World Cup.”
In 2019, the USWNT sued U.S. Soccer, accusing them of gender discrimination. This lawsuit is acting on the unfair pay that the USWNT received after the 2015 World Cup. The men got paid more for losing in the round of 16 the previous year than the women did for winning.
Even though U.S Soccer has agreed to pay both teams equally, FIFA hasn’t yet. Hopefully in the future FIFA acts on their words and gives equal pay at the next World Cups.
