"Everyone thinks women should be thrilled when we get crumbs. I want women to have the cake, the icing and the cherry on top, too."
— Billie Jean King
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Three years ago this month, five of the top players on the U.S. women's national soccer team filed a federal complaint with the Equal Opportunity Employment Commission, citing significant wage disparity with the men's national team. In response, according to the players’ attorney, they were told by the U.S. Soccer Federation that their claims were "irrational." The complaint noted disparities – in pay, per diems, bonuses, and revenue shares – that were disproportionate to the kind of work, success and results the women’s team brought to the Federation. The following April, the Players Association finally came to an agreement that made significant strides towards reaching equality. Around the same time, the U.S. women’s national hockey team had reached an agreement with USA Hockey and averted a strike just before the IIHF World Championships. Historic progress for both teams, but not full parity.
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Last Friday – on International Women’s Day – 28 members of the women’s soccer team filed a gender discrimination lawsuit. Their complaint cites systemic biases that affect not just pay but inequitable treatment in training, facilities, match schedules, and travel. While the collective bargaining agreement reached in 2017 limits any strike leverage before this summer’s FIFA World Cup, the team has three months to make its case and demonstrate the financial and institutional inequality despite the difference in pay and team structures between the men and women’s teams, and the valuation of World Cup bonuses by FIFA, not the national organization.
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It’s worth noting that the 2019 World Cup will be the 10th anniversary of the U.S.-hosted event in which the U.S. women’s team won their second title (they won the first ever women’s World Cup in 1991). The global contest in 1999 was one of the most popular, due in no small part to many young girls wanting to be the next Mia Hamm and the infamous bragate, during which Brandi Chastain, in a spontaneous moment of ebullience after delivering the final game-winning penalty kick, tore off her jersey to reveal a non-revealing sports bra. The move sent pearl-clutchers into many a tizzy, and its media coverage sexualized a conversation that, at times, overshadowed the athletic achievement. The World Cup’s theme song that year, by the way? Jennifer Lopez’s “Let’s Get Loud.”
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The delightful connections to 1999 are not lost on this newsletter as the team and its most prominent players have emerged as global leaders in activism for gender equality in soccer and sports overall. And the arguments they’re making, as Neena Chaudhry, the general counsel of the National Women’s Law Center in Washington, told the New York Times, “are the same kinds of arguments and claims that we still see at every level of education for women and girls, from K through 12 to college. It’s unfortunately a sad continuation of the way that women and girls in sports are treated in the U.S.” (It’s also not lost on this newsletter that sports institutions at the collegiate level are being examined in new ways in light of the “Varsity Blues” admissions scandal, making Saahil Desai’s October piece in The Atlantic all the more fascinatingly prescient, whether you fully agree with the premise or not. But that’s a whole other newsletter.)
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To Chaudhry’s view on the broader impacts of the lawsuit on sports and education, we’d also add “in the workplace." While the Gender Fair Index tracks metrics that measure investments in equality across several key areas that contribute to a fairer company culture overall, it’s worth noting the top-scoring companies that signed the White House Equal Pay Pledge in 2016, including: Amazon, Apple, AT&T, The Coca-Cola Company, Colgate-Palmolive, GAP, General Motors, Hilton, IBM, Johnson & Johnson, L'Oréal USA, Microsoft, Mastercard, Nestle, Target, Unilever, and Visa. Starbucks, which did not sign the pledge, has announced reaching full gender and racial pay parity in the U.S. in 2018; Apple did in 2016.
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If you want to get loud, too, about the cake, the crumbs, and the cherry on top, we have one important suggestion: do it with your consumer and investment dollars.
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Superstar Female Founders Share *10* Lessons To Boost Your Business
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Wine's Glass Ceiling And The Winery Working To Shatter It
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