after the women fought tooth and nail for equal pay from US Soccer, and proclaimed massive victory when they got it, they ended up off worse (and potentially SIGNIFICANTLY worse) than when they started financially.
I remember the suit and them winning. Can you explain how they ended up worse off? To be clear, I'm not disagreeing, I'm just unfamiliar with what occurred after.
Note that the US Women lost the suit. Their case was thrown out of court multiple times. The deal that was finally made between US Soccer and the USWNT was settled out of court once the women lost some of their leverage.
There were two key items in play, salary and bonus's:
1) US Soccer was paying the club salaries of the players (something US Soccer did not do for them men as they never could have afforded it). Because US Soccer was paying the club salaries for the women, they paid them less for the time playing for the national team. The money US Soccer was paying the women was actually MORE than what they were paying the men but the women fought because they did not believe the club salaries US Soccer was paying them should be factored in. The courts sided with US Soccer. Once the club salaries were removed (and rightfully returned to the NWSL teams to pay them), US Soccer immediately made the pay for the national teams identical.
2) A big part of the women's case was about the unfairness in the bonus structure for playing in the WC. US Soccer has no say in how FIFA determines the bonus structure for playing in a WC and again the courts agreed with them.
As you might expect, FIFA's bonuses for playing in the men's WC is far bigger than playing in the women's WC. US Soccer simply said there was nothing they could do. The US men's team solved the problem for US Soccer by agreeing with the women to split all bonuses both teams received from the WC equally. Every one was happy but this is where it gets VERY interesting. In a move no one could have predicted given FIFA's general misogynistic stance on women's soccer over the years, FIFA announed they were going to MASSIVELY increase the bonus structure for the Womens WC. You can probably see where this is going, but the further you go in a WC, the higher the bonus's paid by FIFA. It is going to be far more likely for the US Women to go very deep into a WC than then men. What this will now result in is the men actually benefitting from the new bonus split where as it was suppose to have been a coup for the women.