Equal pay for equal work
Bill Clinton earned notoriety during his impeachment hearings when he responded to a question, “It depends on what the meaning of ‘is’ is.”
Likewise, today’s ongoing debate about equal pay for equal work depends on the meaning of “equal” — and more importantly, on who makes that decision.
The latest incarnation of the gender pay-equity debate centers on soccer’s U.S. Women’s National Team, winners of a record fourth Women’s World Cup and its second in a row.
In March of this year, USWNT players filed a federal discrimination lawsuit against the U.S. Soccer Federation alleging “institutionalized gender discrimination.”
The lawsuit states, “A comparison of the WNT and MNT pay shows that if each team played 20 friendlies in a year and each team won all 20 friendlies, female WNT players would earn a maximum of $99,000 or $4,950 per game, while similarly situated male MNT players would earn an average of $263,320 or $13,166 per game.”
The Associated Press reports that in 2014, the USSF gave the men’s team a performance bonus of nearly $5.4 million after the team was eliminated in the World Cup round of 16. The women’s team received a bonus of $1.72 million after winning the 2015 World Cup.
Are these dramatic differences prima facie evidence of gender discrimination? A strong case can be made that they are, especially when our women are world champions and the men’s team continues to be a distant also-ran.
USWNT players are celebrities and cultural heroes; they’ve won four Olympic gold medals and four World Cups. By contrast, the men failed even to qualify for last year’s World Cup. While many of us are familiar with Megan Rapinoe and Alex Morgan, few can name a single player on the men’s team.
This was illustrated when Nike reported that the U.S. women’s team home jersey became the No. 1 soccer jersey — male or female — ever sold on the company’s website in one season.
Not so fast, say those who dispute the gender discrimination claim. They argue that, like all professional sports, professional soccer is entertainment. It’s not unfair — and certainly not sexist — to pay players more if they bring in larger audiences.
Almost 3.6 billion viewers watched some part of the men’s 2018 World Cup. For this year’s women’s World Cup, about one billion viewers tuned in for some portion of the tournament.
Last year, the men’s World Cup generated $6 billion, and gave about 7 percent to the teams. The 2019 Women’s World Cup made $131 million, and gave out more than 20 percent to the teams. Using an entertainment measure, women were overcompensated.
A.G. Hamilton in the National Review states: “The winning men’s [World Cup] players received only about four times as much as the winning female players, despite bringing in over 45 times as much revenue… The fact that [U.S.] women win more [than U.S. men] is irrelevant, as they play in a different league against a different level of competition.”
And it certainly is a different level of competition.
In 2017, an under-15 year old professional men’s academy team beat the USWNT by a score of 5 to 2. That’s no typo: Young teenage boys beat the top women’s team in the world and the score wasn’t even close. The loss illustrates that even the best women’s soccer doesn’t feature the same speed, size, strength, and skill as men’s soccer.
Megan McArdle in the Washington Post notes: “The fans who avidly followed the men’s tournament certainly weren’t doing anything wrong. And it’s hard to argue that each of them had a moral obligation to be exactly as interested in women’s soccer.”
She says that to expect equal interest, “We’d have to assume that men’s greater speed, strength and endurance definitely make no difference to the sport’s quality.” But if that were so, why would most fans prefer watching Megan Rapinoe play instead of, say, watching participants in the Huntsman World Senior Games?
So is there justification for pay equity among these entertainers née athletes?
Every player on the USWNT plays professionally in the National Women’s Soccer League. And you can bet that they aren’t equally compensated there. The teams are for-profit enterprises and, like all professional sports teams, they pay for performance and star power.
Interestingly, the New York Times argues that the USSF is a different breed of cat. It’s a nonprofit, exempted from taxation because it serves a social purpose: “To make soccer, in all its forms, a pre-eminent sport in the United States.” The Times argues that the women’s team is fulfilling that mission at least as well as the men’s team.
As happens occasionally, I agree with the Times. The USSF reportedly has $150 million in reserves and won’t go broke by reaching a reasonable settlement with the USWNT: gender pay equality for the World Cup and the Olympics where social purpose is a major factor.
Women’s soccer illustrates the complexity of equal pay issues. I support bargaining between management and employees — reportedly underway in soccer’s case — instead of new laws resulting in government bureaucrats making what inevitably would be political decisions.
The viewpoints expressed above are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of The Independent.
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Why are you so obsessed with creating division Howie? Because that’s all you do. Men vs women, black vs white, gay vs straight, republican vs democrat, theist vs atheist. I suppose it’s because any fool with a sledgehammer can tear down a house, but it takes someone with intelligence, creativity and knowledge to actually build one.
So I come out for equal pay for female soccer players and you see that as “creating division.” I assume you either didn’t read the column or you’re in favor of the US women’s national team being paid far less than the men’s team.
I write an opinion column so by definition I address challenging topics. Apparently to your distress, I express my opinion on those topics. And, horror of horrors, my opinion doesn’t always agree with yours. You’ll either need to get used to that or stick to the Independent’s News and Culture sections.
Just calling them like I see them Howie. But like I said last week, you’re so focused on the one individual tree that is this week’s column that you seem incapable of stepping back to look at the forest that is comprised of all of your columns. All you do is created division and conflict. The only thing I don’t know is whether you are paid by someone to do this or whether you really are so indoctrinated to think this divisively. Either way, I’m going to keep pointing out what you’re really doing in the grand scheme of things.