Adidas Announces Equal Pay Bonuses for Women’s World Cup Winners

Sportswear giant Adidas announced yesterday it will provide the same bonuses to its sponsored players on the winning Women’s World Cup team as their male counterparts, promoting the motto “Equal pay for equal play.”

“We believe in inspiring and enabling the next generation of female athletes, creators and leaders through breaking barriers,” Adidas executive board member Eric Liedtke said in a statement.

The announcement was released on Friday — International Women’s Day — following news that all 28 players of the U.S. Women’s National Team is suing the U.S. Soccer Federation for gender discrimination. The lawsuit complains against unequal wages, claiming that female players are consistently payed less than male players despite their superior performance. The women’s team has been crowned World Cup champions three times and Olympic winners four times, while the men’s team has never won either tournament and did not qualify for the 2018 World Cup.

Adidas has been making strides to lessen the pay discrepancy in all industries, however. Last April, the company launched their Equal Pay Day Campaign, joining forces with Lean In on #20PercentCounts, the first of three campaigns to raise awareness of the gender wage gap and call for parity in the workplace.

The new measure will reportedly go into effect when the U.S. women’s team defends their title at the 2019 World Cup in France on June 7.

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