The Women’s National Team Is Not Asking For Equal Pay
They’re asking for an objectively better deal than the men have
“Equal pay” is one of the pithy, three-syllable slogans that Americans love to chant. Others include “build the wall”, “drain the swamp”, and the one that I mentally chant when confronted with any of these: “Kill me now!”
Only an asshole could be against equal pay. But what, exactly, constitutes equal pay? The three-syllable chant doesn’t say. And yet, the chant seems like a highly-nuanced Socratic debate compared to an incurious new documentary about the U.S. Women’s National Team’s lawsuit against U.S. Soccer. The film -- which is called “LFG”, though a more accurate reflection of it's content would be “Megan Rapinoe: Like Gandhi But More Kick-Ass" -- makes Reefer Madness look thoughtful and balanced. It chronicles the WNT’s fight for “equal pay”, but defines “equal pay” in a way that’s objectively and demonstrably unequal. Because -- and viewers of the film could be forgiven for not knowing this -- the WNT is not asking to be paid the same as the men. They are asking to be paid substantially more than the men.
LFG frames the issue in the most black-and-white way possible. They point out -- correctly -- that the U.S. men get larger bonuses for playing games than U.S. women. So, bam: sexism, according to the filmmakers. There’s never any hint that the issue might contain a smidgen of complexity. Incredibly, arguments for both sides of the dispute are presented by the union lawyer representing the WNT.1 Because that’s what you do when you want a fair look at an issue: you have one side’s lawyer give you both arguments. Like how if you want an honest discussion of the O.J. Simpson case, you go to Robert Shapiro so that he can give you both the “O.J. is innocent” side of the case and the “Ron Goldman killed O.J.” side. It’s called “balance”.
In reality, the issue is complex. Very complex; I'm agnostic as to whether the USWNT is underpaid, because I can’t claim to have my head completely around the issue. But I do know that the version of “equal pay” put forward by the WNT’s lawyers is objectively unequal. If 1 + any positive, nonzero number is > 1 -- and both an MIT supercomputer and my TI-81 graphing calculator from sixth grade have confirmed that equation -- then the WNT are seeking a better deal than the men have.
Here’s the story…
The year was 2012. Coolidge was president, and a trolley ride cost a nickel. The Collective Bargaining Agreement between the union representing US Women (the WNTPA) and U.S. Soccer (USSF) was expiring. So, the WNTPA made a proposal.
Consider what they were doing: They were making the opening proposal in a contract negotiation. This is where you ask for the moon and the stars. I’m in a union -- the Writers Guild -- and our opening proposal is always bonkers.2 We ask for front-end points and back-end points and super-duper bonus points and royalties until the sun burns out. We ask for private submarines and personal handjob robots and immunity from George Clooney’s scathing on-set pranks (the man is addicted to hijinks!). The other side, in turn, counters that we should be paid $3/day in Confederate money and be granted a one moldy crust of bread a week. Because that’s how you do these things. You start with insane requests and eventually meet in the middle once everyone is prepared to commit murder/suicide just to end the damn thing.
So: If the WNT wanted the same deal as the men, this would have been the time to ask for it. But they didn’t. Instead, they asked for a payment structure that prioritized guaranteed money over bonuses.
That made perfect sense. They were trying to make it more viable to be a full-time women’s soccer player. The economics of women’s pro soccer are notoriously dodgy -- you know how Bend It Like Beckham ends with the girls heading to America to play in a pro league? That league folded. It's why Parminder Nagra had to get a job in a hospital and Keira Knightley became a pirate. Another league folded shortly before the 2012 negotiations. It made sense for the WNTPA to prioritize a guaranteed salary and a subsidized league for top players -- better to get guaranteed money than to cross your fingers and hope things go well, but if you break your ankle you have to call Gene at Cinnabon and beg for your job back.
A Memorandum of Understanding was signed in 2013. The women got a bunch of things that the men don’t get, all of them centered around stability and guaranteed salary. The tradeoff was that the women got smaller bonuses for playing and winning games. Did that constitute “equal pay”? Maybe -- it’s debatable. The amount a player received depended on how the team performed and what role that person played on the team (a sure-fire starter would do better under the men’s deal, a role player or injured player would want the women’s deal). Importantly: The WNTPA didn’t seek the men’s deal.
Fast forward to late 2015/early 2016. McKinley was president, and a Scott Joplin tune called the Dying From Typhoid Rag was sweeping the nation. The MOU was expiring, so it was time to negotiate again. This time, the union -- which was under new leadership -- went full batshit bananas. They asked to keep everything they won in the last round and add the bonus structure that the men get. That is: they wanted all of the good things from the women’s structure plus all the good things from the men’s structure with none of the downsides. This is the type of negotiating chutzpah I really enjoy -- clearly the WNTPA had been taking the Jack Donaghy Negotiate to Win! courses.
The most insane WNTPA demand had to do with World Cup bonuses. FIFA -- which stages the World Cup -- pays prize money to countries that do well. That money goes to federations, and the federations pay their players. FIFA pays far more prize money to men than women: The men got $400 million in 2018, while the women got $30 million in 2019. That’s 13.33 times as much. If you’re wondering “but how much money do the men’s and women’s World Cups bring in?”, the answer is: We don’t know. FIFA is about as transparent as the Freemasons if they were a subsidiary of the Cosa Nostra, and the men’s and women’s World Cups are sold as a package. So we don’t know. But a rough stab at a guess can be made from the fact that the women’s T.V. viewership was estimated at 28 percent of the men’s. So: Men’s viewership is 3.57 times higher, men’s prize money is 13.33 times higher. If we accept that “equality” here might mean “prize money is an equal percentage of profits”, it looks like FIFA has some major work to do.
But that’s FIFA’s fuckup, not U.S. Soccer’s. Still, the WNTPA asked3 U.S. Soccer to pay World Cup bonuses equivalent to the men’s bonuses even though U.S. Soccer didn’t receive anything close to that kind of money from FIFA. And they demanded that U.S. Soccer to pay those bonuses for all the World Cups the women won dating back to 1991. U.S. Soccer says that would be almost $100 million,4 and they say it would bankrupt the program (and I believe them). Also, not for nothin’: The “win the World Cup” bonus in the men’s contract is just there to be polite. They’re not winning the World Cup -- that number means nothing. If the U.S. men win the World Cup -- soon, under this CBA -- U.S. Soccer won’t have to worry about bonuses because the full fucking apocalypse will be upon us.
The 2017 bargaining round ended with a deal that was similar to the one before it. The women -- unlike the men -- continued to get guaranteed money, and a bit more of it. They also got bonuses that were bigger than before, but still smaller than the men’s. All evidence suggests that the WNTPA didn’t seek to be paid according to the men’s structure. This is a crucial point: The women didn’t ask for the men’s deal. The foundation of U.S. Soccer’s case is that the way women are paid reflects different preferences, not discrimination. That’s a solid argument UNLESS the men’s deal was off-limits to the women. Megan Rapinoe addresses this point in the documentary:
“We never had the opportunity to agree to the same deal. So, the men got to do their negotiating on the top floor, and we started in the parking lot.”
WNTPA Lead Council Jeffrey Kessler adds:
“This is very important -- they never offered the women the same deal as the men. … We’ve put this evidence before the court.”
Again, this is a big deal: If the women asked for the same deal as the men and were told “no”, that could be a sign of discrimination. But the evidence points the other way. In 2017, Becky Sauerbrunn - a (very good) central defender and a plaintiff in the case - told Sports Illustrated:
“We’re trying to figure out where women’s soccer is going, so we may not have the same exact structure as the men. So equal isn’t the right word. It would be equitable, because we are asking for a different structure.”
Ultimately, the court found that the women had been offered a deal similar to the men’s. In his ruling, Judge R. Gary Klausner writes:
“In May 2016, USSF offered the WNT a pay-to-play proposal similar to the MNT CBA but the WNT rejected it, preferring an agreement that involved some element of guaranteed compensation.”
The WNTPA attorney (Kessler) says evidence that U.S. Soccer “never offered the women the same deal as the men” was put before the court. And maybe that evidence was put before the court somewhere at some point, but I can tell you: It’s nowhere in the 25-page complaint that initiated this lawsuit. The closest the complaint gets to claiming that the women were offered the men’s deal is this sentence:
“USSF rejected requests for compensation for the WNT players that would have been at least equal to that afforded to the male MNT players.” (emphasis added)
“At least equal.” AT LEAST. This is key: The WNTPA doesn’t want the men’s compensation package instead of what they already have; they want the men’s compensation package in addition to what they already have. Their suit is about back pay; they want to collect money they would have gotten if they had agreed to the men’s CBA in 2017 while keeping the money they were paid according to their actual CBA. It’s not just having your cake and eating it, too: It’s having your cake, eating it, and also eating your neighbor’s cake, and crashing a birthday party and eating the cake while the birthday boy watches and cries, and then robbing a Hostess at gunpoint and stuffing your face with cake until the cops show up.
If you think the WNTPA is making an absurd argument, you’re not alone: Judge Klausner threw the case out of court last year.5 The WNTPA didn’t lose -- they were thrown out of court. Here’s how Tom Spiggle, a lawyer who specializes in employment law and whose firm is tragically NOT called the Li’l Spiggle Law Firm (it’s right there in front of you, Tom), described the ruling:
LI’L SPIGGLE: "To grant summary judgment and essentially kick them out of court, it's the judge making the determination that no reasonable juror could look at this evidence and find in favor of the plaintiff."
That’s pretty decisive. And yet, a casual watcher of LFG might think that only a person with the gender views of Henry VIII on a bad day could take issue with anything the WNTPA is asking for.
Let’s take a step back: What’s actually happening here? What’s happening is a contract negotiation. The WNTPA is a union -- their job is to represent their clients’ interests. They’re filing a lawsuit to pursue that interest, and they win even if they lose. The lawsuit is terrible P.R. for U.S. Soccer -- they’ll give away concessions just to stay out of court. The WNT’s current deal expires at the end of the year. Sorry to be a cynic, but this Kickass Girlboss Fight For Justice is just jockeying for leverage in advance of a collective bargaining round.
And I should be clear about something: I don’t blame the players for trying to get as much as they can. An athlete’s career is short, and it’s hard to make a living as a women’s soccer player, so…yeah, do what you gotta do. I also don’t really blame the union, because, yes, they’re making crazy-ass, maximalist arguments, but making crazy-ass maximalist arguments is what lawyers do. That’s their job. They’ll be up against lawyers who will be doing the same thing for the other side - this is the haunted house of a legal system we’ve created. If your lawyer doesn’t occasionally make arguments that are bunny-boiling insane, you should probably fire that lawyer.
But I do blame the makers of LFG. They oversimplified a complex issue in order to push a narrative. I’ve written about this before - eliminating nuance in service of a narrative is a major problem, and it should stop. Lawyers gonna lawyer, but we don’t have to be so naïve that we listen to and believe lawyers’ arguments as if they’re not being paid to represent one side. Those of us who work in media should treat our audience like grown-ups and at least try to convey complexity where it exists. Because very few issues are so simple that they can be reduced to a three-syllable chant.
U.S. Soccer declined to participate in the film. They told the Washington Post that they chose not to be interviewed because they weren’t approached until late in production.
Wait...did I say “bonkers”? I meant “completely just”. Everything we ask for is always completely just and reasonable. Solidarity!
Did ask and is still asking! This demand is part of their lawsuit.
My back-of-the envelope math suggests “almost $100 million” is probably close to right. We have figures for the last World Cup: The men would have gotten $1.1 million each for winning, times 23 players is $25.3 million. FIFA paid out $4 million for winning the WWC, so 25.3 - 4 = 21.3. The numbers will be slightly different for each World Cup (there’s no way FIFA paid $4 million in prize money in 1991), but nonetheless: 21.3 x 4 (because the women won four times) = 85.2.
He actually threw most of the case out of court; some elements regarding player treatment (e.g. hotels and charter flights) were allowed to proceed. The WNTPA has appealed the ruling.
This is a humorous, but objective analysis of the situation. The facts are well described and the conclusion aligns with the judge's decision. You will be cancelled., you freakin' misogynist.
As the token soccer fan in a number of social circles, I am often on the receiving end of people's thoughts on the US Women players making as much as the men. As you say, it's a bit nuanced given the current salary structures extant in the soccer world. And absolutely zero people seem to have any idea of that.
Sounds like the producers of this film are counting on that.