MICHEL MARTIN, HOST:

The U.S. Ladies’ national football team is ranked primary inside the global. The crew received the girls’ World Cup 3 times, and the U.S. Women are four-time Olympic champions. The U.S. Guys’ football crew – not so much. They’ve in no way received World Cup or the Olympics. They didn’t even qualify for the 2018 World Cup. But the women gamers are paid much less than men. And it truly is why the U.S. Women’s national crew filed fit towards the U.S. Soccer Federation in a federal courtroom on Friday – Women’s Day – charging gender discrimination. USA Today sports columnist Christine Brennan has been following the story, and she or he’s with us now.

Christine Brennan, thanks so much for speak to us.

CHRISTINE BRENNAN: Oh, Michel, my pride. Always suitable to talk with you – mainly approximately a topic like this.

Women Sports

MARTIN: Well, the lawsuit points out that for their fulfillment in winning the 2015 Women’s World Cup, the U.S. Women were paid less than a third of what the U.S. Men were paid for dropping within the round of ‘sixteen. And I think numerous humans might observe that and say, how is that viable? So how is that feasible?

BRENNAN: Well, soccer is – has a vintage boys’ network to the max, Michel. And truly, the U.S. Soccer Federation is doing a better activity than most federations around the sector. Without a doubt – the sexism and the anti-women feelings are rather sturdy in the sport of soccer global. And so what we see right here in the U.S. Women’s countrywide team – I consider it is the maximum famous ladies’ group on the earth in any sport, and simply role fashions for so many other ladies sports and charging away, leading the rate, so to speak, on those varieties of troubles.

They’ve just stated enough is enough. Right here we’re, three months away from the next Women’s World Cup, which is coming up in France in June. And they’re – with the self-belief that they have been given from years of gambling sports activities in our you. S ., Title IX now 46, almost forty-seven years old – they just aren’t going to address this anymore. And it indeed is why they did this now. And it truly is quite a declaration approximately in which ladies are, no longer just in sports activities, but in our tradition in 2019.

MARTIN: Tell me approximately the history of this fit. As I understand it, this started with a criticism that the ladies filed to the EEOC lower back in 2016. Is that proper?
BRENNAN: That is correct. And they failed to – that hasn’t gotten anywhere – and five gamers lower back then, consisting of Megan Rapinoe, Alex Morgan, and more than one other. But frankly, there had been skirmishes, Michel, going all of the manners back to the year 2000, while the gamers struck and missed a – one match going into the Sydney Olympics. And it’s exciting because I’m sure lots of your listeners bear in mind where they had been after they watched Brandi Chastain kick that penalty kick nearly two decades in the past now – July 10, 1999. So 1999 turned into really a watershed moment because they noticed the big stadiums. They saw the recognition, the handiest tale in records, as far as I recognize, to ever be on the covers of Time, Newsweek People, and Sports Illustrated the same week.

That becomes the U.S. Girls’ soccer group – the state falling in love with what it is created with Title IX. And so with that, I suppose that gave them the enhance to know they had to do extra. And that has been of their DNA in terms of preventing equal rights for ladies and, as I said, main the price for all varieties of woman athletes around the globe, no longer just inside the U.S. So from ’99 onward, there have been these skirmishes approximately same pay. This merely is just losing the mike.