Top Players from the U.S. Women’s Soccer Team Are Taking Action Against Unequal Pay

John Sibley/ZUMA

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.


Five members from the US women’s national soccer team, including Carli Lloyd and Hope Solo, are filing a federal complaint against US Soccer to accuse the sport’s governing body of rampant wage discrimination, the New York Times reports.

The complaint, which will be filed on behalf of the entire U.S. women’s soccer team, alleges that top female players only make 40 percent of what their male counterparts earn—despite the fact that the women’s team generated $20 million more in revenue last year alone and consistently attracts  crowds comparable to those who follow the men’s team.

“The numbers speak for themselves,” Solo said in a statement. “We are the best in the world, have three World Cup championships, four Olympic championships, and the USMNT get paid more to just show up than we get paid to win major championships.”

The official filing on Thursday follows previous reports of unequal pay and dismal playing conditions on the field. In December, the women’s soccer team skipped a game in Hawaii to protest such unsafe conditions—a setting, they say, that would never be offered to the men’s team.

“You don’t see the men ever playing on turf,” Hope Solo told Mother Jones. “You don’t see any World Cups being played on turf—even when the major club teams come to America to play on turf stadium, they lay sod.”

In the same interview, Solo called foul on the issue of pay disparity.

“We got a $1.8 million dollar bonus for winning the World Cup and we had to disburse it among 23 players,” she explained. “The men for losing got $8 million to share among the players and they also received millions of dollars for every point that they received in the World Cup.”

No comment yet from the authorities at US Soccer. But it might be worth noting that just this week, the US men’s team failed to qualify for the Olympics for the second time in a row.

DONALD TRUMP & DEMOCRACY

Mother Jones was founded to do journalism differently. We stand for justice and democracy. We reject false equivalence. We go after stories others don’t. We’re a nonprofit newsroom, because the kind of truth-telling investigations we do doesn’t happen under corporate ownership.

And we need your support like never before, to fight back against the existential threats American democracy faces. Fundraising for nonprofit media is always a challenge, and we need all hands on deck right now. We have no cushion; we leave it all on the field.

It’s reader support that enables Mother Jones to report the facts that are too difficult, expensive, or inconvenient for other news outlets to uncover. Please help with a donation today if you can—even a few bucks will make a real difference. A monthly gift would be incredible.

payment methods

DONALD TRUMP & DEMOCRACY

Mother Jones was founded to do journalism differently. We stand for justice and democracy. We reject false equivalence. We go after stories others don’t. We’re a nonprofit newsroom, because the kind of truth-telling investigations we do doesn’t happen under corporate ownership.

And we need your support like never before, to fight back against the existential threats American democracy faces. Fundraising for nonprofit media is always a challenge, and we need all hands on deck right now. We have no cushion; we leave it all on the field.

It’s reader support that enables Mother Jones to report the facts that are too difficult, expensive, or inconvenient for other news outlets to uncover. Please help with a donation today if you can—even a few bucks will make a real difference. A monthly gift would be incredible.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate