Professional women soccer players have been paid significantly less than men throughout the sport until Feb. 2 of this year. The United States National Women’s team filed a lawsuit against the United States Soccer Federation (USSF) in 2019 to gain equal pay in the sport. This lawsuit went on for three years before it was settled towards the player’s favor.

While the official lawsuit started in 2019, five players from the U.S.’s National Team including Alex Morgan and Megan Rappinoe filed a complaint about the unfair pay in 2016 saying that the USSF pa the  women’s reigning world champions less than the male team. This complaint quickly changed into the entire U.S. team and their fans arguing for the right thing.

There were very many benefits from the lawsuit outcome. The players received $24 million from the USSF to go towards players in the league, retired players and younger women’s teams. In addition, the USSF has also agreed to pay women equally to men in the future.

These changes are a massive step in the right direction for not only this sport, but for all sports around the world and for gender equality as a whole. Unequal pay has been, and still is a very important problem. Women’s sports are just as important and impressive as the men’s. Paying them less money is unfair to the players and their families.

 This is the best next step for equal pay throughout the world and could easily motivate other sports, organizations and even countries to do the right thing and take the jump towards equality. Change in equal pay has been needed for a long time and these players and fans were the right people to start this movement.

Contact Ian Humphreys at [email protected]