BUT OF COURSE: Women’s Soccer and the Equal Pay Canard.

The women’s team collectively bargained for and won a pay structure that guarantees them salaries, severance pay, medical benefits, and some performance-based bonuses. The women’s team wanted the security of salary-based pay rather than purely performance-based pay, and they wanted to guarantee a salary even for players who were on the roster but didn’t play.

By contrast, the men are strictly pay-for-play. They do not receive a salary or additional benefits like health insurance or severance pay. Their pay structure is performance-based. As Michael McCann, who directs the Sports and Entertainment Law Institute at the University of New Hampshire School of Law told Minnesota Public Radio, “The two systems [for paying women and men] are designed differently . . . The men’s system pays players when they play, through bonuses, whereas the system for women’s players has guaranteed pay and also pays for certain bonuses as well. But it’s structured differently.”

Hmm.