Progressive politics have been a terrible addition to the world of sports.
Fans simply want to see athletic excellence when they watch sports.
And one anthem-protesting team just struck an unbelievable deal.
One of the biggest lies of the left is the so-called gender pay gap.
The pay gap myth has been debunked for 40 years, yet it still persists.
When controlling for profession, years in the workforce, and hours worked, the pay gap virtually disappears.
Today, in the top cities in America, female college graduates in similar fields as their male counterparts can be expected to earn more.
But the lie persists, and it has made it all the way up to the U.S. Women’s National Soccer Team.
The team, which ironically participated in the anti-American anthem protests launched by Colin Kaepernick, sued to get paid the same as the men’s national team.
The lawsuit was thrown out for a number of reasons, but the United States Soccer Federation gave the women’s team $24 million.
Now the U.S. Soccer Federation announced that the two teams would get “equal pay.”
In a historic accomplishment, U.S. Soccer, @USMNT and @USWNT have come together to agree to new collective bargaining agreements that will run through 2028 and achieve true equal pay – including equalization of World Cup prize money.
— U.S. Soccer (@ussoccer) May 18, 2022
There’s just one problem: the women actually made more than the men on a per-game basis.
Prior to the new collective bargaining agreement, the women’s team rejected the men’s deal because it did not include employee benefits.
The men get employee benefits such as healthcare through their teams in the various professional leagues they play in when they’re not playing for the national team.
Because of the employee benefits cost and other guarantees, the women were paid less cash for games.
However, when factoring in the numerous perks from the employee benefits, the women made more.
If the men’s and women’s teams had switched their deals, the women still would have made more than the men’s team.
Also, the Men’s World Cup generates far more revenue than the Women’s World Cup.
In 2018, the Men’s World Cup raked in $400 million while the 2019 Women’s World Cup pulled in $30 million.
The two teams are competing in two entirely different stratospheres in terms of enthusiasm and revenue.
It should also be noted that the women’s team lost to high school boys.
From The Washington Examiner:
“[I]n 2017, an under-15 professional men’s academy team, and an American club’s team at that, beat them 5 to 2. Yes, that’s right: Teenage boys beat the women’s top players in the world, and the result wasn’t even close. That’s not necessarily the women’s team’s fault, and in fact, they didn’t take it as cause for alarm about the team’s abilities. The loss did not mean they the U.S. women weren’t highly skilled. It does illustrate that even the best women’s soccer in the world doesn’t feature the same level of speed, size, strength, and skill as men’s soccer at lower levels. That isn’t sexism, it’s nature.”
Despite these facts, USWNT and opportunistic politicians like Joe Biden have perpetuated the lie that women are getting paid less for the same jobs under the same circumstances.