The US women’s soccer team got the same contract as the men
The US Soccer Federation announced on Sept. 14 that it has offered identical contracts to the players associations of both the men’s and women’s national teams in response to an ongoing battle over pay equity. In a statement, US soccer said the goal of aligning both teams under a single collective bargaining agreement and pay structure was to ensure players male and female “remain among the highest paid senior national team players in the world, while providing a revenue-sharing structure” that allows both teams to benefit from future investments. “This definitely is a major step forward,” says Leeja Carter, a feminist exercise and sports psychology scholar at Temple University, adding that the identical contract proposals are a recognition of “the ways in which the US women’s soccer team hasn’t been treated fairly” in the past.
