Obama gives U.S. women’s soccer an assist in pay dispute

Olivier Knox
·Chief Washington Correspondent
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President Obama welcomes the U.S. Women’s National Team to the White House last year. (Photo: mpi34/MediaPunch/IPX)

Six months ago, Pres. Barack Obama welcomed the U.S. women’s soccer team to the White House to celebrate their World Cup championship, saying they had achieved “payback” for prior defeats. On Wednesday, he waded into the battle over the considerable difference in pay between men and women players.

“Equal pay for equal work should be a fundamental principle of our economy,” Obama said at an event to highlight disparities in male and female wages. “It’s the idea that whether you’re a high school teacher, a business executive or a professional soccer player or tennis player, your work should be equally valued and rewarded, whether you are a man or a woman.”

Five leading stars of the United States women’s national team recently announced that they had filed a complaint with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), charging that they were paid considerably less than the men’s team.

“I think that we’ve proven our worth over the years,” superstar Carli Lloyd told NBC’s “Today” show. “Just coming off of a World Cup win, the pay disparity between the men and women is just too large. And we want to continue to fight.”

A similar gap exists in professional tennis.

Asked whether the president was endorsing the soccer players’ EEOC complaint, White House press secretary Josh Earnest said Obama was reflecting on “the facts” but underlined that “what sort of ruling is handed [down] by the EEOC is something that the commissioners there will have to conclude on their own.”

Obama’s remarks came as he dedicated a new national monument to women’s equality on “Equal Pay Day,” an event meant to highlight disparities in income between men and women.

Earnest said he was not familiar with the way the men’s and women’s soccer team pay is set, but that Obama was noting “that there is a significant disparity based solely on the gender of the players, and that seems unfair.”

“That disparity and the inherent unfairness of that disparity, I think is pretty obviously to anybody who’s been paying attention,” Earnest said. “And the president’s been paying attention.”