Andrew Das' article "Five Top Female Players Accuse U.S. Soccer of Wage Discrimination" was published by the New York Times on March 31, 2016. Soccer players Carli Lloyd, Becky Sauerbrunn, Alex Morgen, Megan Rapinoe, and Hope Solo have filed a federal complaint against U.S. Soccer, saying that they are paid less than their male counterparts. Not only do they believe this is inherently wrong, but they also claim that because they have been more successful than the men's team and have produced most of the revenue for U.S. Soccer in recent years, they deserve to at least be paid the same amount if not more. This is a culmination of tensions that have been growing between the team and the corporation, and U.S. Soccer is expected to fight strongly against this accusation. Wage differences between male and female teams have been a hotly contended issue recently because men's teams are usually more successful, but in sports like U.S. soccer and figure skating, female viewership far outranks that of men, making this a tricky subject to make a fair judgement on.
This relates directly to the feminist movement in the 70s, during which one of the things women like Betty Friedan and Gloria Steinem worked for was equal pay for women and men. Groups like the National Organization of Women staged protests and sit-ins and spoke out across the country to get equal rights for women. Now, forty years later, women still on average earn less than men. This topic has been discussed by many but I would highly recommend a video by John Green in which he discusses the gender pay gap in depth and examines some of the causes.
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/01/sports/soccer/uswnt-us-women-carli-lloyd-alex-morgan-hope-solo-complain.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=first-column-region®ion=top-news&WT.nav=top-news&_r=0
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=it0EYBBl5LI
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