The U.S. Women’s National Soccer Team was celebrated on the 2023 ESPYs for their contributions to women’s sports — and for preventing for equivalent pay.
Briana Scurry, Christen Press and more of the team’s individuals — both past and present — took to the ESPYs stage on Wednesday, July 12, to just accept this year’s Arthur Ashe Award for Courage.
“What we’ve been able to do is in reality superb,” Scurry, a U.S. women’s goalkeeper who was part of the 1996 strike for equal pay throughout the Olympics, mentioned while accepting the award on behalf of the team. “There were 252 women who have worn the shirt of the U.S. national team since its inception. And we're accepting this award on behalf of every single one among them.”
Press, meanwhile — who played for the women’s national team when they were in the end awarded equivalent pay in 2022 — continued the acceptance speech by way of sharing the team’s hopes for the longer term.
“This is a significantly exciting time of our team and sports as large. As anyone who has been there for us and our adventure toward equality, is aware of our fight is not over,” she shared. “We’ve been proud to carry [the torch of equality] ahead and we wish to create thousands of touches. Millions.”
She continued: “This is a time where we will have to stand in support of civil and human rights within the identify of a extra just and anti-racist international. To in finding tactics to support our trans siblings, to suggest for recognize and kindness in ways that we interact with every other. We are proud to simply accept this award on behalf of each and every one who received’t surrender preventing for a better world.”
Named in honor of tennis participant Arthur Ashe, the award recognizes remarkable athletes for “possessing energy within the face of adversity, courage within the face of peril and the willingness to stand up for their ideals no matter what the price,” according to ESPN.
The women’s soccer team has steadily fought for essential social issues, maximum significantly equal pay between males’s and women’s sports. In March 2016, Carli Lloyd revealed that the group handiest received 40 percent of their male counterparts’ income. “I feel the timing is right, she mentioned all through an look on Today. “I believe that we’ve confirmed our worth over the years. Just coming off a World Cup win, the pay disparity between the women and men is just too massive. And we wish proceed to fight.”
Three years after submitting an equal pay complaint, the team sued the U.S. Soccer Federation for gender discrimination. Hot off the crowd’s 2019 World Cup win, the deodorant brand Secret donated $529,000 in toughen of the team’s struggle for equal pay.
“Women just made historical past, but they've at all times deserved equivalent pay,” the logo wrote in a full-page New York Times ad in July 2019, asking the U.S. Soccer Federation to “be on the right side of history.”
The ad persisted: “Inequality is about greater than pay and gamers; it’s about values. Let’s take this moment of party to propel women’s sports activities ahead. We urge the U.S. Soccer Federation to be a beacon of strength and end gender pay inequality once and for all, for all avid gamers.”
The lawsuit was once settled in February 2022, with every player incomes a complete of $24 million, in line with ESPN. That September, both the U.S. males’s and women’s national teams signed an equal pay agreement promising equivalent pay for games, tournaments and World Cup prize cash.
“I've to provide a large number of credit to everyone concerned, the women’s national team and their PA (gamers’ affiliation), the men’s national team and their PA, and everybody at U.S. Soccer. There had been such a lot of those that helped, that labored together to make this happen,” U.S. Soccer President Cindy Parlow Cone mentioned in a observation at the time, in line with PBS. “And it wouldn’t get driven over the line without the lads jumping in and being on board with equivalent pay.”
In addition to equal pay, the U.S. Women’s National Soccer Team has additionally spoken out in fortify of the Black Lives Matter movement. The athletes sported jackets featuring the movement’s name all the way through a November 2020 match.
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“We wear Black Lives Matter to affirm human decency. This is not political, it’s a remark on human rights,” read a observation from the team shared by the use of the U.S. Soccer Federation’s website. “As a team, we work towards a society the place the American ideals are upheld, and Black lives are now not systemically targeted. We collectively acknowledge injustice, as that is the first step in operating in opposition to correcting it.”
Player Alex Morgan shared her own statement by way of Twitter at the time, mentioning that she and her fellow players would “work jointly toward a society the place the American ideals are upheld, and Black lives are no longer systematically focused.”
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