After a six-year legal battle, the US Women’s Soccer Team has finally settled its lawsuit against the U.S. Soccer Federation. 

The settlement will award players a lump sum of $22 million, with an additional $2 million going into an account benefit for the players’ post-career goals and charitable efforts related to women’s soccer. 

That’s all well and good. However, the settlement also came with a promise to equalize pay between the men’s and women’s soccer teams. 

That promise is too little, too late.

The Equal Pay Act, passed in 1963, was supposed to abolish sex-based wage discrimination. Apparently, equal pay for women in sports was an unspecified exception. 

Sure, there have been many arguments made over the years about why female athletes “don’t deserve” equal pay. 

The federation’s argument was not only wrong, but blatantly sexist. 

The U.S. Soccer Federation claimed in its original court filing that male soccer players have “more ability, strength and speed.” Basically, the federation tried to argue that male soccer players are simply better at their jobs than female players, so they should get paid more. 

I guess the U.S. Soccer Federation didn’t watch the four FIFA Women’s World Cup championships and four Olympic gold medal victories since 1991. 

The federation’s claim obviously ignored the fact that the U.S. Women’s Soccer Team has consistently out-performed the men’s team. There’s also the fact that they’re playing the same sport, so the abilities of players, regardless of gender, should be roughly equal.

In 2022, promising to pay women the same as men for doing the same job is too late. Paying their female athletes equally is something the federation already should have been doing. 

It’s even more of a slap in the face to have been paying male players more prize money for playing in global competitions despite worse performances.

This isn’t just an issue in the realm of soccer; plenty of female athletes get the short end of the stick when it comes to payday.

Female athletes competing professionally in basketball, golf, softball/baseball and tennis also earn much less than their male counterparts, regardless of performance, according to a 2021 salary comparison. 

The fact that U.S. Women’s soccer players are finally getting paid equally for their work is not disappointing. What’s disappointing is that the promise of equal pay has come so late in the game — no pun intended. 

What should have already been a given took years of legal battles to get done. Female athletes have clearly shown that they’re more than capable in their chosen sports, and they should be treated as such.