Imagine that you are a female and has attained the highest award for your achievement at work. Imagine that your boss made $20 million last as a result of your work. Imagine that your counterpart, who is a male, achieved no success, no awards and cost your boss over $2 million in losses last year. Now imagine that your boss paid you ONE QUARTER of what he paid your male counterpart. Do you think that is fair or legal? What would you do?
The above scenario is exactly what happened to the US Women’s Soccer Team and they have filed a complaint with the federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) against their boss, the US Soccer Federation. The unequal treatment of women in this case is astounding. For instance, men are paid approximately $68,000.00 each for winning the world cup-women are paid $15,000.00 each for winning the world cup. This disparity in pay starts from the very bottom-such as exhibition games and continues right to the world cup tournament. As a team, the men were paid $9 million for losing in round 16 in 2014. As a team, the women were paid $2 million for winning the world cup!
The old argument about men’s teams being more popular does not hold water in this case. More viewers watched the US women win the world cup than watched the NBA finals or the World Series.
Hopefully this case will bring much needed attention to the inequality in pay which still exists.