--- title: Female Athletes Fighting for Fair Pay Can Help All Women description: Women in sports publicly fighting for equal pay can inspire women in the workplace and motivate businesses to provide equal pay canonical: https://time.com/4710628/female-athletes-fair-pay/ author: Sean Gregory article:opinion: true article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2017-03-23T11:05:10.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-08-04T07:54:30.080Z article:section: Ideas og:title: How Female Athletes Can Help Advance the Fight for Fair Pay og:description: From national hockey and soccer players, to Billie Jean King og:url: https://time.com/4710628/female-athletes-fair-pay/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt7ac707668d299890/6988bf7dab6d7701796ad521/female-athletes-can-help-advance-fair-pay1.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 2560 og:image:height: 1440 og:image:alt: female-athletes-can-help-advance-fair-pay og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: How Female Athletes Can Help Advance the Fight for Fair Pay twitter:description: From national hockey and soccer players, to Billie Jean King twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt7ac707668d299890/6988bf7dab6d7701796ad521/female-athletes-can-help-advance-fair-pay1.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # How Female Athletes Can Help Advance the Fight for Fair Pay > Sponsored content. 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It explains how TIME's journalism is made, from the first pitch through the editorial decisions behind a finished story or cover. #### How can I read about how TIME chooses its covers? Inside TIME is the newsletter where TIME's Editor-in-Chief explains cover selection and the editorial reasoning behind major stories. It is free at time.com/newsletters. #### Who is the editor of TIME? Sam Jacobs is TIME's Editor-in-Chief. He writes Inside TIME, a twice-weekly newsletter about the newsroom's reporting and editorial decisions. #### Is Inside TIME free? Yes. Inside TIME is a free newsletter, available at time.com/newsletters. A paid TIME subscription is separate and available at time.com/subscribe-agent. ## Video: USA Hockey strikes deal with women’s national team, will play in world championships [Watch (HLS stream): USA Hockey strikes deal with women’s national team, will play in world championships](https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/gxZZHEic.m3u8) (1:01)  _Published 2017-03-29. The U.S. national women’s hockey team has signed a new four-year deal with USA Hockey to end its boycott of the upcoming world championships, USA Hockey announced._  by [Sean Gregory](https://time.com/author/sean-gregory/)  ## Sean Gregory Senior Correspondent Mar 23, 2017 11:05 AM UTC  Olympian Duggan is among the U.S. women’s hockey players leading a charge for fairer treatment. Olympian Duggan is among the U.S. women’s hockey players leading a charge for fairer treatment. Nils Jakobsson—Zuma Press  by [Sean Gregory](https://time.com/author/sean-gregory/)  ## Sean Gregory Senior Correspondent Mar 23, 2017 11:05 AM UTC The women on the U.S. national [hockey](http://time.com/4508517/zamboni-history/) team can recall even the smaller slights as vividly as a high stick to the face. There was the time the players weren’t invited to the public unveiling of the Team USA jerseys for the [2014 Winter Olympics](http://time.com/tag/2014-winter-olympics/); the inside collar of those jerseys commemorated men’s Olympic champions but not the 1998 gold-medal-winning women’s team. But it’s a much deeper disrespect — how much the women make for doing the same job as their male counterparts — that has turned the hockey rink into the latest battleground in the nation’s ongoing fight over equality in the workplace. In March, the team announced plans to boycott the world championship — which the U.S. is hosting in Plymouth, Mich., beginning on March 31 — unless the players get fairer compensation and increased support. In the past they’ve received $1,000 per month from USA Hockey — and only in the six months before the [Olympics](http://time.com/tag/olympics/). Many players hold second and even third jobs to make ends meet — a situation that has some of the world’s most talented players questioning their careers. Jocelyne Lamoureux-Davidson, a two-time Olympic silver medalist and five-time world champ, plans to have a child after the 2018 Olympics. Although Lamoureux-Davidson, at 27, is still in her prime, she says a family would stretch her pay even thinner and could force her to give up a sport she’s been playing since she was a young girl brawling with her older brothers on a frozen pond in Grand Forks, N.D. “Women shouldn’t have to choose between their passion and having a family,” she says. “They should be able to do both.” Across all fields, median earnings for full-time female workers in the U.S. are 80% of what men make — and sports stars are no exception. Last year five members of the [U.S. women’s soccer team](http://motto.time.com/4578379/us-women-soccer-equal-pay-fight-60-minutes/), the defending World Cup champions, filed a [wage-discrimination](http://time.com/money/4277843/us-womens-soccer-equal-pay/) suit against the sport’s national governing body, arguing that the players receive about a quarter of the compensation their male counterparts make despite being more successful on the field and a draw on TV. Such fights have been waged by tennis stars for decades. After [Billie Jean King](http://keepingscore.blogs.time.com/2008/11/23/top-10-female-sports-pioneers/slide/billie-jean-king/) threatened to sit out the 1973 U.S. Open, the men’s and women’s winner for the first time each took home the same $25,000 bonus. Wimbledon became the last of the sport’s four Grand Slams to offer equal prize money in 2007, after pointed lobbying from Venus Williams. “How did we get equal prize money?” says Stacey Allaster, former president and CEO of the Women’s Tennis Association. “Ultimately it’s the athletes’ voice, the athletes’ power.” Even so, some lower-level tournaments continue to offer more money to the men’s draw. The pay gap for tennis stars may not be the most urgent wage divide in the nation, but by using their perch to fight for a larger principle, female athletes have the potential to shift the national debate. “These athletes are role models,” says Bobbi Thomason, a senior fellow at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. “They pave the way for women in the workplace to fight for what’s fair.” The women on the U.S. hockey team aren’t demanding the seven-figure contracts of their counterparts on the men’s team, who play professionally in the National Hockey League. They simply want a fairer deal from USA Hockey, one that recognizes the equal work they put into their jobs and the results on the ice: back-to-back silver medals and a consistent rank as one of the world’s top teams. The players also want equal investment in girls’ hockey programs and more marketing and promotion to grow the women’s game. With the boycott threat as leverage, the players made progress during a marathon negotiating session with USA Hockey on March 20\. If they do get a fairer deal, they say it will be the result of not only their specific case but also a social climate that has changed significantly since King spoke out at the U.S. Open. “The women that are standing up for themselves are making history,” says Meghan Duggan, a member of the team since 2007, drawing a line from her team’s fight to recent protest efforts like the [Women’s March](http://motto.time.com/4695030/international-womens-day-womens-march-strike/). “And it’s a good time to be on this side of history.” ## Transcript The USA National Women's Hockey Team has ended its boycott just days before the start of the world championships. The team struck a deal with USA Hockey despite talks stalling earlier on Tuesday. The terms have not yet been disclosed. Now just last week the women's team announced, it would not participate in the world championships until the women were paid a living wage. USA Hockey tried to find replacement players from youth teams but none of the women accepted the offer. Right after the boycott was announced, Captain Meghan Duggan told Sports Illustrated that the fight represented more than just hockey. It's we're at the point where we need to kinda make a move, and stand up for what we believe in, and what we think is right and fair, in order to make progress for An not only women in hockey and women in all other sports, but just women in this country, and what type of support is fair when it comes to their employers. 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