The fight for equal pay continues.
It took a long time for the United States Women’s National Soccer Team to get equal pay in the workplace with the men’s national team. It took nearly six years after the US women’s soccer team filed a complaint with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and nearly three years since the team filed a lawsuit against US Soccer to get equal pay with men for the same job. Along the way, U.S. Soccer claimed its men’s squad brought in more money and deserved higher pay. But the women’s team did quite well financially and that really wasn’t much of an argument. In 2020, U.S. Soccer attorneys seemed to agree with a 1920s England theory from that “indisputable science” proved that the women were inferior to the men. The English Football Association concluded that women should not be playing football or soccer because it was “quite unsuitable for females and ought not to be encouraged.” The FA found doctors who said that soccer posed a serious physical risk to women. A century ago, Dick Kerr’s Ladies led by Lily Parr was quite popular in England and that was a problem. The men running the FA barred women from playing at a highest level and that would remain the policy for about five decades.
Equal pay for men and women in the United States has always been a problem. In 1955, Edith Green, who had been elected in November 1954, proposed an Equal Pay Act which would have required that men and women were paid equally for equal work. The bill was signed into law by President John F. Kennedy on June 10th, 1963. The legislation was never applied equally. Green was one of four lawmakers who pushed for the Title IX legislation to create higher educational equality that was passed in 1972. The equality fight continues.
Evan can be reached at evan_weiner@hotmail.com
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