Women’s U.S. World Cup win may have sparked protests against gender pay gap

The U.S. Womens national soccer team celebrates their third World Cup win in 2015.

Photo provided by Google Public Use

The U.S. Women’s national soccer team celebrates their third World Cup win in 2015.

Anna Brecht, Staff Writer

A few days ago, a photo collection on Twitter started popping up on my timeline enough times that I decided to read the dialogue on the photos. The argument was over the gender pay gap between the U.S. Men’s National soccer team and the U.S. Women’s National soccer team. The person involved in this argument was a man, talking to three members of the U.S. Women’s National soccer team.

For anyone not into soccer, the U.S. Women’s National team won their third World Cup title in 2015. The men’s team is now ranked 30th in the world, which is argued by, “we’re ranked number one,” from the women’s players.

The actual pay that each team receives was also brought into the argument.

“If we win a match, we get $1,300. The men, they get around $17,000,” said the women’s players. “If the men’s team loses, they make $5,000, we don’t get paid anything if we lose.”

Carli Lloyd and Alex Morgan, along with three other of their teammates on the women’s team filed a federal complaint on Wednesday, and they accused U.S. Soccer of wage discrimination, and they’re protesting against the cause. This protest goes along with the major pay gap issue that has arisen and has become more obvious since the Women’s team World Cup win in 2015. As is the dialogue mentioned above, the U.S. Women’s team claims that they earned forty percent of what players on the U.S. Men’s national team earned.

This issue is not only involved in the soccer world, but it seems to be an issue in many industries. In the majority of sports, in the music and acting world or in any typical job this controversy seems to be present. I do believe that there is an issue with the pay gap, and it seems to be growing instead of getting smaller. The solution, as the U.S. Women’s soccer team is taking into hand, may be to acknowledge and protest against the situation.