Alex Morgan Call Her Daddy Interview: ‘Women are inferior’ was argued by U.S. Soccer in case against equal pay

Two-time Women’s World Cup winner Alex Morgan looked back at the U.S. women’s national team’s equal pay battle, saying the group “never knew if it was going to ever happen” as they faced years of opposition before successfully reaching a settlement with the U.S. Soccer Federation. Morgan said that U.S. Soccer essentially argued “women are inherently inferior” and that the men have more responsibility.

Morgan was one of five players who filed a complaint to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission in 2016, months after the USWNT won their first World Cup in more than a decade and was also a plaintiff in the lawsuit filed by the entire team months before they won the 2019 World Cup. The legal battle played out for several years before the parties reached a settlement in 2022 that guaranteed equal pay and included $22 million in backpay.

“We won the World Cup first time in 16 years,” Morgan said on a recent episode of the Call Her Daddy podcast. “All of a sudden, had sold out stadiums. We were seeing revenue. We were generating revenue for U.S. Soccer like never before. We were getting sponsors coming to U.S. Soccer saying, ‘We want to work with the women.’ U.S. Soccer doesn’t do sponsors for only the women’s or men’s team. They bundle them together. U.S. Soccer is like one umbrella. Sponsors come and they get everything, so we were seeing this. The books are open. U.S. Soccer Federation is a company. You can see the taxes. You can see the returns at the end of the year, so you’re like, ‘Okay, I know what you’re making. I know what we’re generating. This isn’t adding up.’ So, 2016 comes around. We file a motion with the EEOC, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, and it goes nowhere. It sits, sits, sits.

“Three years go by and we know that we are bringing money into U.S. Soccer. However, we are getting paid, for example, like per game, $1,500 for a win. Zero for a tie, zero for a loss. The men, I’m throwing this out there, but I think it’s almost accurate. $12,000 for a win. It was astronomically different. At the end of the year, we were making, if you played in every single game, you’re making maybe like $85, $90,000. Men, if they were to play the same amount of games as us, win the same amount of times as us, like 400-plus thousand dollars. It was so different. There was such a gap, and then we were seeing what we were generating, like the revenue we were generating for them, and we’re like, ‘This doesn’t make sense in terms of what we’re bringing in, but also we’re doing the same job for the same company as the men, but getting paid vastly different and getting treated vastly different.’ We’re sitting in 27B and the men are in 2A, so we’re like, ‘This is not adding up at all.’ And don’t get me started also on FIFA and how we had to also, and they’ve come a long way, but back in 2015, there was a lot of challenges also on that front. So, we went to U.S. Soccer and we filed a lawsuit. We sued them.”

Though the USWNT received plenty of public support after they filed their lawsuit, the reception was different inside the federation.

“I remember specifically going to the U.S. Soccer annual board because I was on the Athletes Council, and you get a chance to speak at the end if you want,” Morgan said. “There’s a microphone, like a hot mic. And one of the board members from another board, it’s like there’s like 300 people in the room. He gets on the mic and he goes, ‘Our women’s team is so disappointing. They disgust me. They don’t deserve to be paid what they’re asking for. They don’t even deserve what they’re getting now.’ He goes on and on for five minutes and after you hear people in the room clapping, like at the U.S. Soccer annual board meeting and us athletes were mortified, like embarrassed on his behalf, but also like this is who’s making the decisions in this room. Okay, we have a lot of work to do.”

The federation’s pushback, though, was most visible in the court documents that came to light in early 2020 and later forced the resignation of president Carlos Cordeiro.

“We had to submit court documents … basically saying why we deserve equal pay and U.S. Soccer saying why we didn’t,” Morgan said. “Their main argument was that the man bears more responsibility because they, what was it? They bear more responsibility because they are inherently faster and stronger because it takes more strength and speed by a man and so the responsibility is greater. So basically saying women are inherently inferior. We dragged them. They retracted that statement later.”

Morgan pointed to the leadership change after Cordeiro’s resignation as a turning point in the legal battle, with retired USWNT player Cindy Parlow Cone being promoted to the role after serving as the federation’s vice president.

“US Soccer hired Cindy Parlow Cone, who was a women’s national team player, scored many goals, very good player,” Morgan said. “She became U.S. Soccer president. Also, that was a voluntary position. You did not get paid to do that, so when she came in charge of that, we were like, “Okay, we got one on the inside. We got this. Still got to convince that board, but we got this,” and when we settled and achieved equal pay and millions, over $20 million back pay, I was holding my daughter when we signed it. My daughter was three years old, two and a half, three years old, and it was a really special moment because it was, I mean, you got to think, over 500 hours of our own time put into something that you never knew if it was going to ever happen. You didn’t know how you were going to be seen as. You didn’t know if this was going to work out. You didn’t know what kind of effect this could possibly even have in sports.”