Pushed by Consumers, Some Sponsors Join Soccer’s Fight Over Equal Pay

Moments after the United States women’s soccer team won the World Cup last month, Nike released a bracing commercial celebrating the championship as a triumph of female empowerment.

“We will keep fighting not just to make history, but to change it, forever!” the ad’s narrator says as a crowd of voices bursts into the ubiquitous “I believe that we will win” cheer.

The impeccably timed and beautifully crafted spot was an implicit endorsement by Nike of players who are suing the U.S. Soccer Federation for equal pay, a particularly expedient position for a company that recently had been accused of gender discrimination by both sponsored athletes and employees.

After withering criticism from runners it had once sponsored, Nike announced in May that its contracts no longer would include performance-pay reductions that effectively penalized female runners for becoming pregnant. Allyson Felix, an Olympic gold medalist who went public with her dispute with Nike over maternity coverage, recently was signed by Athleta…[Read More]