Christen Press is tired of talking about the USWNT lawsuit. It’s August 2, the day before her side faces Ireland in the first match of their World Cup victory tour. Before practice at the Rose Bowl, the forward is fielding the usual questions from reporters, explaining, for the umpteenth time since March, why she and her colleagues need equal pay. As she finishes making her case, a tall reporter peeks his head out of the pack with a new question that he says is “a little off-topic”—welcome news to Press, who laughs heartily before switching gears along with him to discuss the art of detoxing after World Cup celebrations.
More than a month after the USWNT snatched their second straight World Cup trophy in historic fashion, fatigue has set in—albeit beyond the view of the 37,040 fans who watched the team smother Ireland 3-0 the following day. That’s because, in the midst of celebration, questions decades in the making still loom: Will this World Cup win, their fourth, be the triumph whose ripple effects—visibly and monetarily—extend beyond a couple of years? First and foremost: Will their success in France propel forward the women’s fight to be paid equally to their male counterparts? The March lawsuit, filed against U.S. Soccer by 28 USWNT players, for wages and back pay and also for improvements ranging from better training and travel conditions to increased promotion, is currently in mediation. The development came three years after five players filed a complaint with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. Under the 2017 collective bargaining agreement, a female player on a World Cup–winning team would earn a maximum of $260,869, while a male player could net $1,114,429, meaning that members of this year’s no. 1 female squad earned less than a quarter of what a man could’ve for the same feat, according to The National Team author Caitlin Murray’s Guardian analysis.
The players’ national predicament is something they’re sorting out while playing for their home clubs; all 23 rostered players in France double as National Women’s Soccer League ambassadors. Beyond the World Cup, will the NWSL see sustained success? Will the public even care about women’s soccer now that it’s off the international stage until next summer’s Olympics?
We’ve been here before. “This is a revolving merry-go-round, a discussion about interest in women’s soccer,” says Nicole LaVoi, director of the Tucker Center for Research on Girls & Women in Sport at the University of Minnesota. “Every four years I get excited, ‘Oh, it’s a tipping point. Oh, we’re going to lead to great things.’ And then four years from now we’re having the same conversation.”
It’s easy to be pessimistic. Ever since the exuberant 1999 World Cup win, we’ve heard ultimately unfulfilled promises that a certain moment or victory will change everything for women’s soccer: it will increase girls’ participation in youth sports, bring more media coverage, lead to a sustainable professional league, and even close the ever-persistent pay gap. But this win is different, thanks to charismatic USWNT activists fighting a historic legal battle that will have ramifications well beyond their team, and even sports in general.
“There’s just a social conscience and confidence to this team that is unmistakable, unmissable, and incredible,” says New Yorker contributor Louisa Thomas. In 2018’s Upon Further Review, she argued in a gloomy essay that Brandi Chastain’s iconic, gold-sealing penalty kick in the 1999 World Cup changed virtually nothing. But now, she allows, the time is ripe. “It’s not the right moment because they had good timing, it’s the right moment because they made the moment,” Thomas says. More than ever, people are taking notice of the USWNT on and off the pitch, be it courtesy of Megan Rapinoe’s shock of pinkish-purple hair, Alex Morgan’s tea-sipping, or a casual 13-0 victory to kick off an incredible tournament. Now that the confetti has been cleared, the women are in a strong position to capitalize on their fight for equal pay. But can they use that momentum to keep growing their sport domestically?
Press is tired because generations of USWNT women are tired. The lawsuit is the latest step in advancing a battle for equal pay that extends back more than 20 years in women’s soccer, when Mia Hamm and her cohort first fought to earn enough to play soccer professionally in the first place. Since then, several collective bargaining agreements have incrementally bettered their situation, without rectifying the pay gap.
“I’ve always supported our players advocating for themselves. I think that that’s important,” outgoing USWNT head coach Jill Ellis said in a news conference before the team’s victory tour opener at the Rose Bowl, adding that she hopes a resolution will be reached between the players and U.S. Soccer soon. “It’s not just salaries, per se. It’s playing on turf four years ago, and now we haven’t played on turf in, gosh, I think in two years. It’s all those things that just make our game better, make our players better, and make our product better.”
USWNT’s sustained advocacy stands to benefit not only their own team, but also women’s sports more generally. “I think this is the right time, right now, to be using your platform to talk about the issues,” says Skylar Diggins-Smith, a two-time WNBA All-Star who has been vocal about equal pay in her own league. “I can appreciate their conversation, what they are bringing to the table and how they are trying to invoke change.”
U.S. Soccer is pushing back on the USWNT, and hard. The federation has argued that the players forfeited their right to complain about pay by agreeing to new conditions under the 2017 CBA, which did improve women’s pay and broader circumstances. But that’s not the whole story. “We as a union collectively bargain on their behalf and cut a deal that was the best deal we could get,” says Becca Roux, the executive director of the USWNT Players Association. “Just because employees have agreed to something does not mean it stops a discriminatory pay structure.” (U.S. Soccer declined to comment for this story.)
In a desperate attempt to tilt the math in its direction, U.S. Soccer released contextless numbers on July 29—criticized by the USMNT and USWNT players’ associations—claiming that the women were paid more than their male counterparts from 2010 through 2018. Yes, the 2017 CBA narrows the margin between men’s and women’s pay in friendlies and tournaments, upping the women’s pay from 38 percent of the men’s to 89 percent—still not equal—according to The Washington Post. But the World Cup earnings gap, for which U.S. Soccer deflects blame to FIFA, remains vast; for example, the men’s team earns more for losing a qualifying game than the women do for winning one. Revenue generation is another common argument for paying the men’s team more, but from fiscal years 2016 to 2018, the women’s games produced more gross revenue than the men’s (revenue from sponsorships is tougher to sort out).
Also, the women performed better during the eight-year stretch U.S. Soccer highlighted and earned bonuses, while the men didn’t succeed in the World Cup, and in one case didn’t even qualify. Had the men and women performed similarly and also played the same number of games, the men’s payout would’ve easily dwarfed the women’s. In fact, the men get bonuses just for showing up—if they were to play in and lose 20 games a year, they’d earn $100,000, an amount only the top female players earn. Were the men to win those games, their payout would be much higher.
The U.S. Soccer counterargument should give the women a better position heading into mediation, according to Rick Rossein, a CUNY School of Law professor who specializes in employment discrimination. In cases like this, mediation through a neutral third party can be complete with a compromise in as little as two weeks, Rossein says. If successful, it would prevent the case from going to a potentially long, costly trial. There’s a burden placed on U.S. Soccer not only by the USWNT’s World Cup win, but also the players’ personalities and public image. “A number of them are very savvy at being their own advocates, really presenting themselves as very responsible people. Obviously, everybody has seen their amazing athletic abilities, but beyond their athletic abilities, we see them as real human beings,” says Rossein, who has a healthy appreciation of Rapinoe. “Their high scorer and leader, she’s amazing. She has a very mediative approach herself, and yet makes it very clear what they’re trying to achieve and what they think would be justice in this situation.”
Lilly Ledbetter, the namesake of the first bill Barack Obama signed into law upon becoming president in 2009, knows a thing or two about the USWNT’s plight. “No one should have to go through what those ladies are doing now,” Ledbetter says. She went through it herself in 2006 and didn’t earn a penny from her own lawsuit, so she now supports equal pay for women in any industry, no matter how lucrative professional sports may seem compared with her job at Goodyear. “A lot of people are saying, ‘Oh, they’re getting what they should. Look what they got paid.’ Well, that’s not the point. If that’s a good pay standard for the men, it’s good for the women.”
Adding to the public pressure are a couple of bills introduced on the Hill to withhold federal funding for the 2026 men’s World Cup until the women are given “fair and equitable pay,” by Senator Joe Manchin (West Virginia) and representatives Doris Matsui (California) and Rosa DeLauro (Connecticut), all Democrats. (Meanwhile in Washington, U.S. Soccer hired two lobbying firms to further its cause.) Those symbolic bills certainly wouldn’t pass Congress, but make a firm statement in support of equal pay. “The U.S. women’s soccer team brought the whole world, the whole country, together,” Matsui told CNBC. “These women demonstrate what’s best in our country, and I just really feel that they need to be recognized in the appropriate way—and they ought to be paid equally, too.”
Closing the equal pay gap is the most important possible outcome after this year’s World Cup, but it’s not the only domestic area for growth in women’s soccer. “We are starting to see that shift in conversation of, women’s soccer still exists beyond this one month every four years, and beyond the Olympics,” says Athletic USWNT and NWSL beat reporter Meg Linehan. “I think this is going to be the real test of 2019.”
Early returns on the post–World Cup NWSL bump are positive, and are certainly aided by an ESPN broadcast deal through the rest of the season, which ends in October, and a shiny new sponsor in Budweiser. “We will support the game and these deserving athletes every single day, not just every four years,” a full-page Bud ad in The New York Times read.
In Portland on Sunday afternoon, an NWSL-record 25,218 fans watched the Thorns squeak past Crystal Dunn and the North Carolina Courage. Other teams are shattering their own attendance records. For a nationally televised Red Stars match against the Courage on July 21, Chicago sold 17,388 tickets, nearly 10,000 more than had been sold for a stand-alone women’s soccer match previously. Eight USWNT players featured in that game. But to sustain this kind of progress after the excitement of the World Cup fades, Linehan notes that the nine-team league will need both better infrastructure—anything from better facilities to stronger marketing to thriving, potentially MLS-backed expansion teams—and more investments from big-name sponsors like those that back U.S. Soccer. One can be difficult to lock down without the other. The USWNT victory tour, which will run through October, should boost excitement around watching the world champions play, whether in international competition or with their home teams. It will also double as Ellis’s farewell tour, a celebration of her legacy, including two World Cup wins. (She was not fairly paid either, earning less than the men’s U-20 coach. Kate Markgraf, a ’99er and the newly minted first general manager of the USWNT, will be tasked with finding her replacement.)
Connected to increased awareness of NWSL is increased media coverage. Linehan, who’s been covering women’s soccer since 2012 and may be the first such full-time, paid beat reporter for a mainstream outlet, has seen a drastic change in recent years, including in France for this year’s tournament, where the U.S. had the second-largest contingent, behind the host country. “We’re starting to see actual money change hands, to actually cover women’s soccer beyond just people who love it and want it to be covered well,” she says. The Equalizer, for which Linehan once did unpaid work, now has a subscription model setup. Outlets like The IX newsletter, which covers women’s soccer once a week, and Burn It All Down, a feminist sports podcast that covers soccer extensively, are also subscription-driven. What’s more, she says that interest has expanded internationally, too, citing more in-depth coverage of women’s soccer in countries like Jamaica, Brazil, and Argentina. That coverage only stands to grow, as FIFA just announced an expansion of the World Cup field from 24 sides to 32 for 2023.
Following a major sporting event on TV like the Olympics or the World Cup, girls’ participation in youth soccer typically sees an uptick to match. Whether that’ll be sustained, though, is to be determined. Luckily for fans, they can take actionable steps to support the sport’s continued development. “I would challenge readers and fans of women’s soccer with all the excitement and all the interest and engagement they had around the World Cup, if they could figure out even one way to keep engaged, to sustain their interests, to support the team, to support a league, to support the sport, whatever that looks like to them,” LaVoi says. “If those millions of fans did that, I think that helps push the needle.”
If the lawsuit is settled through mediation, the nature of the process means that the USWNT won’t get everything they’re asking for, but they do stand to see their earnings rise to an extent and their other concerns addressed. If and when that happens, the U.S. will be that much closer to signaling to the rest of the soccer world that women are just as deserving of the respect heaped upon men. “If we can achieve pay equity for them, it will not only improve the current situation but it will inspire future generations of young girls to become leaders,” tennis great and staunch equal pay advocate Billie Jean King says in a statement to The Ringer.
It’s around 7:30 a.m. on July 10, weeks before the victory tour kicks off. Manhattan’s Battery Park is quiet. Two hours before the World Cup victory parade begins, one woman in a red-and-white-striped shirt walks into a nearby Starbucks with a sign in tow. On it, Rosie the Riveter holds a soccer ball, and her speech bubble reads, “We Did It.”
The parade that follows is fittingly triumphant. Mixed in with the ticker tape raining down on supporters are actual pages of the USWNT lawsuit. Backup goalkeeper and team documentarian Ashlyn Harris says, “Pay us, bitch,” while teammate Allie Long looks straight into Harris’s phone and chews up a page of the lawsuit.
There’s still a whole lot of “it” left to be done.
Ringer staff writer Haley O’Shaughnessy contributed reporting.
