丧心病狂
去年发的HOPE接受的采访,被删了,再发一遍。
Hope 昨天接受GOOD网站访问,再谈美国女足争取Equal Pay的深层意义:Our Fight For Equal Pay Is About More Than Just Soccer
这次是她自己给网站撰文,用的是第一人称:
https://sports.good.is/articles/hope-solo-us-womens-soccer-cbaOur Fight For Equal Pay Is About More Than Just Soccerby Hope SoloThe collective bargaining agreement between the U.S. Women’s National Soccer Team and U.S. Soccer expires on December 31. The players have been petitioning for pay equal to what U.S. Soccer pays the Men’s National Soccer Team. Former national team goalkeeper and World Cup and Olympic champion Hope Solo shared with GOOD her thoughts on the continuing battle for equity as the deadline nears. The following are her words, as told to Jon Baum:
I’ve been passionate about the fight for equal pay for a long time, and whether or not I’m on the national team has no bearing on that. It’s something I pushed for during my close to 20 years on the team, before we even filed the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission claim. I won’t be sidelined because I’ve been fired. I still have an EEOC claim filed and it’s something that I intend to go full-force forward with.
Over the years on the national team, my eyes were opened to the inequities between men and women—and not just within soccer—around salary, media coverage, endorsement dollars, and marketing dollars. Equal pay isn’t just a women’s rights issue, it’s a human rights issue
Many players in the past have tried to fight for equal pay, but we didn’t have leadership that would take us all the way, that wasn’t fearful in going up against the federation. U.S. soccer has great attorneys, they have a lot of money, and they were our employer, so we were fearful to take this fight as far as it needed to go. Players became accepting of making a decent salary. And when I say decent, I mean it’s a good living here in America, but it in no way compares to our counterparts on the men’s team.
This is a battle, this is a fight, and when you’re talking about power, people don’t just give that away. You have to fight for it. And I think it’s what has held many movements back, held many revolutions back. People don’t want to lose what they already have, whether it’s their jobs, the comfortable lifestyle that they have—people are scared to go all the way in.
So now we’ve pushed it, we’ve filed a claim with EEOC, and I can only hope and pray that the team will continue to remain united and stand strong. We always knew it was going to get really scary and the pressure was going to mount, especially now. The collective bargaining agreement (CBA) expires on December 31, and right now, people are getting scared—around future monies, health insurance, the new contract, going on strike, the scheduling of games. But right now is the time when the team must stand strong—stronger than ever before—and not buckle to U.S. Soccer.
Federation President Sunil Gulati and U.S. Soccer are putting pressure on the players. I know that’s happening. I’ve seen many different CBA negotiations during my time on the team, and the federation’s approach has not changed one bit. Their strategy is to instill fear in the players—to divide and conquer us. I had a great relationship with Sunil, to be honest, and he would reach out to me often. But he’s also good at what he does, and he tries to get close to the players to smooth them over.
You can’t be friendly with Sunil and hope to push for change. True equality is not going to be given, it’s not going to be bargained for. We have to take it and stand fully for what we’ve earned.
I’ve heard both the head of communications for U.S. Soccer and the CEO call us girls instead of women. And maybe it’s not on purpose, but I do believe male chauvinism is institutionalized in America, and U.S. Soccer is no different. I believe we have a better product on the field than the men’s team does. We have earned money for the federation, and no one can deny the fact that we are entertaining, to not only our country, but to many places around the world where we have supporters who tune in.
But in the past, U.S. Soccer has literally said to us, ‘This is the budget that we’re willing to spend on the women’s team for the next four years. Within that budget, within that money that’s allotted to the women’s team, we will let you guys tell us how you want to allocate it.’ That’s not negotiating. That’s our employer telling us what the numbers are going to be and then us trying to put the puzzle together and figure out how to make it work.
They will continue to intimidate, continue to control the negotiations, and continue to tell us what they are going to allocate for us and hope that eventually we buckle. It’s happened every single time for the 20 years I was on the team.
It’s hard to understand U.S. Soccer’s argument on why we don’t deserve equal pay, other than we’re just women and women are second tier to men. Of course U.S. Soccer doesn’t want to pay out millions of dollars more either, but I also think it goes back to the institutionalized male chauvinism among the people who work at the federation, the people who are on the board, and even many of the staff members who are hired by U.S. Soccer.