After six years of continuous fighting for equal pay, the National Women’s Soccer Team (NWST) finally won their case and settled on an agreement for equal pay between the men’s and women’s national soccer teams.

In 2016,  the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission received complaints from five of the NWST athletes stating that even though the Women brought in about $20 million more in revenue last year than the U.S. men’s team, the U.S. women’s team is paid about ¼ of what the men’s team gets. Attorneys. The complaints came after the women’s team success in multiple championships generated no financial compensation. The U.S. men’s soccer team barely makes it to the semifinal every year and are paid with an average of around $60,000 and a range of payment between $25,000-300,000, with a little more than half of the men’s team being paid above average.  The U.S. women’s soccer team consecutively makes championships every year and have 4 world cup titles and 4 Olympic gold medals, the women’s pay is averaged to be $40,000 with a range of payments between $25,000-$85,000. 

Megan Rapinoe and Alex Morgan had some rough starts to getting an equal amount of pay between the U.S. men’s and women’s soccer teams. In 2020 the equal pay lawsuit was dismissed for the sole reason that the women were getting paid more than the boys in total compensation. 

With the new pay matching up to the men’s team, money is going to be tight as men and women do not have the same views and sponsors. FIFA told the NY Times that to ensure equal pay, they are looking for the men’s soccer team to surrender or share millions of dollars, as money will be scarce. Some of the men from the U.S. National Soccer Team were in support of the girls getting equal pay, so I can’t imagine their shock to realize they were in support of something that would ultimately hurt them. Adding on to reach this goal of equal payment the money for sponsors will have to increase and that could cause many to drop out which ends with the National Women’s Soccer Team (NWST) losing millions of dollars in the loss of sponsors.

The National Women’s Soccer Team (NWST) has won many championships in the past, resulting in an influx of cash. Although this is great to use for their pay, the money difference will still make a huge difference.

Will the men’s soccer team be willing to share their money with the women’s soccer team? And if not will they be able to raise the prices enough for sponsors that they won’t back out? Though the win of this lawsuit is a great thing to look forward to, I can’t help but think how the future will look and how we will adapt to this change, the Economic Forum states that as of right now it will take 108 years for gender gap index to close, this means that this is not there are many more fights and lawsuits and disagreements to come before there can be some semblance of equality between genders. Why has it taken us decades for slight changes to equality and yet we still haven’t reached it, and apparently have many more years to go.