US Soccer Evens the Field
Equal Pay for Women’s and Men’s Soccer Is a step in the Right Direction
Today I woke up to good news (let’s be honest, it’s not every day that happens) and I was so jazzed I just had to write about it. In a settlement, U.S. Soccer has pledged to equalize pay between the men's and women’s teams. This was a hard-fought victory and while 2022 seems a bit late to celebrate such equity, I think it’s worth taking a moment to find gratitude.
Big Sports Have Big Impact
While the gender pay gap is still alive and well across the US, there’s a reason we should be celebrating the win in soccer. Soccer has an audience and because of that, this move towards equality does as well. Whether or not anyone needs 300,000 to play a game isn’t the point. The point is that this stands for something greater than soccer.
Women have been systematically oppressed in the United States and across the world for ages. From the pink tax to the #MeToo movement, women are accustomed to being less valuable than men. While it’s well and good to tell little girls that they can “be anything they want to be” in their grade school classrooms, the real world isn’t living up to our own promises.
If the movement to have equal pay for the US Men’s and Women’s Soccer teams does nothing else, it will at least be a story we can share with our children. After today’s announcement, I can look my daughter in the eye and say, “Yes, it’s hard darling. Yes, there are still problems kiddo. But also, yes, there is progress for gender equality in action.”
The Implications of Equality
If I’m being honest, I’m not even a huge soccer fan. And yet, the excitement of this announcement moved me. The implications of pay equality go far beyond a paycheck.
Our world is (some could say needlessly) gendered. When we create these systems of “other”, we all live them out in live time. Our day-to-day interactions are littered with examples. Did someone open a door for you today? Did someone talk over you? Did someone move out of the way for you when you were walking down a grocery aisle? These gendered micro-interactions are everywhere and most of us are oblivious to their impact.
When US Soccer decided to choose equality, they were also choosing to address these gendered idiosyncracies. Will giving one ball-kicking lady the same amount of money as a fellow ball-kicking man mean I don’t get my boobs stared at? No. But what it does say is how they think the world should be. In their small way, US Soccer is walking the walk of the values we all say we hold. That’s integrity and it’s admirable.
Anyway, I hope we all can find a moment to say “Yay!” and look beyond the doom and gloom of most headline news. Today I got a chance to remember that positive change is possible. US Soccer, thank you for giving me some hope for a better tomorrow.
