WEEKLY WHINE

The Woman Card is in fact a yellow card

Two weeks ago, we gave you a complete accounting of the situation in which female footballers who represent the United States find themselves. We informed you that if you calculate what a player would earn under US Soccer’s rules for women and then for men, they should come out to roughly the same value.

Well, as promised, we have now done that. The table below uses the payments from the current collective bargaining agreements for the women’s and men’s US national teams, as reported by Sports Illustrated’s Grant Wahl. Values shown here assume a pool of 50 players for both teams.

We then multiplied out each payment according to the USWNT’s performances in the fiscal year ending THU 31 MAR 2016, omitting the five Olympic qualifying matches for which payment values were not available. And guess what: The women do receive significantly less than if they were paid under the men’s terms. A player who receives the maximum salary of US$72,000 and who played in all matches would have earned a total of US$215,550, only 35% of what she would have made under the USMNT’s collective bargaining agreement.

This may look like an intractable problem, but in fact, it is totally tractable. And guess what: You can help tract this problem!

Each of the amounts shown below is available for you to renegotiate on behalf of the US national team players. Simply enter a new value and press Enter, or click Calculate, to see how the results will change. Can you balance the budget and ensure that female footballers are paid fairly?

Well, you probably can. It’s surprisingly easy.