Women’s Soccer Plays a Phony Pay Game

Complaints about an alleged pay gap are a public-relations ploy to get a sweetened union contract. 

By Allysia Finley of The Wall Street Journal.

"Earlier this month, U.S. women’s national soccer team midfielder Megan Rapinoe appeared with Hillary Clinton in New York City at an “Equal Pay Day” event. The U.S. women’s team has won three World Cups and four Olympic gold medals since 1990. The men? They failed to qualify for this year’s Olympics and haven’t gotten past the quarterfinals in the World Cup since 1930. “Yet somehow,” Mrs. Clinton said, “the men are making hundreds of thousands of dollars more than our women.”

This would be outrageous if it were true. But it isn’t. Democrats are using the equal-pay issue to increase the turnout of female voters in the fall. The U.S. women’s soccer players have a different interest: Landing a better labor contract. The women’s national team and the U.S. Soccer Federation have been tangled in a labor dispute, and the players are trying to put pressure on their employer with a yellow card for gender discrimination.

In December the players-union lawyer sought to invalidate a 2013 memorandum of understanding that extended their prior collective-bargaining agreement, which expired in December 2012, through the end of this year. The action appeared to be preparing the way for a strike, which is prohibited by the agreement. In February the Federation sued the union to enforce the contract.

The risk of a strike before the Olympics in Rio de Janeiro this summer increases the women’s negotiating leverage. The union hasn’t publicly articulated its demands, but players last year complained bitterly about often having to play—as the men’s team rarely does—on artificial turf, which can be less forgiving than natural grass. Then there’s the dubious equal-pay matter.

Last month, five top women’s players filed a complaint with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission alleging gender discrimination. Players on the women’s team, they contend, earn as little as 40% of what their male counterparts are paid, despite having generated more revenues last year.
“We continue to be told we should be grateful just to have the opportunity to play professional soccer, and to get paid for doing it,” goalie Hope Solo said on NBC’s “Today” show. “In this day and age, it’s about equality. It’s about equal rights, it’s about equal pay.”

But data released last week by the U.S. Soccer Federation show that the top women’s players make nearly as much as the highest-paid men’s players. Since 2008, six national-team men and six women have earned more than $1 million from the Federation. And according to ESPN, 14 of the 25 highest-earning national-team players over the past four years have been women, whose compensation averaged $695,269. That’s 2.2% below the average for men. Women also receive benefits that men don’t, including maternity leave and severance pay if they get cut from the team. Women get paid if they’re sidelined with an injury; men don’t.

Women on the U.S. national soccer teams aren’t paid less than men. They’re paid differently because the collective-bargaining agreements they have negotiated emphasize income- and job-security. Women players earn annual salaries of $72,000; the men get paid by how many games they play. The men’s roster is more fluid, and the head coach can call players to camp for one game.

Nearly 50 men’s players appeared in games for the U.S. national squad last year, but only three played more than 13 games. The women’s team fields about half as many players.

Players on the women’s team receive smaller bonuses than the men: Women are awarded $1,350 for each win, while the men get $5,000 for each game they’re on the national roster and are paid $6,250-$17,625 for each victory, depending on their opponent’s ranking.

Another significant disparity: The U.S. women’s team received $2 million from the Fédération Internationale de Football Association (FIFA) for winning the World Cup last year, while the men’s team landed $9 million merely for advancing to the round of 16.

How could that be? Simple: Men’s soccer is much more popular than women’s soccer world-wide. Historically, men’s soccer has also been a bigger draw in the U.S. Between 2011 and 2015, men played in 53 home games with attendance averaging 35,536. During that period, women played 50 games in the U.S., drawing an average attendance of 16,559. In 2014, when the men’s team was in the World Cup competition, their revenues were roughly four times that of the women’s team. Last year, when the women’s team was competing for the World Cup, their revenues ($23.5 million) beat the men’s team’s ($21 million) for the first time.

Most men’s soccer players earn more from their club teams than women do from the embryonic National Women’s Soccer League, which the Federation launched in 2012 to provide female players who don’t make the national team with a venue to showcase their talent. But the Federation isn’t responsible for how professional soccer leagues pay their players.

The players on the women’s team might not have a persuasive legal case about unequal pay, but that hasn’t stopped them from going public with their complaints. Maybe they’re hoping Hillary Clinton will work the refs."