Rss@dailykos.com (laura Clawson) · Wednesday, March 15, 2017, 6:24 pm
The U.S. Women’s National Hockey Team will not play in the International Ice Hockey Federation World Championship this month, Travis Waldron reports. The U.S. team has won six of the last eight championships and the U.S. is hosting the event this year, but fair pay and support concerns are leading the players to take a stand, even though “We want to play.”
“We are asking for a living wage and for USA Hockey to fully support its programs for women and girls and stop treating us like an afterthought,” captain Meghan Duggan said Thursday. “We have represented our country with dignity and deserve to be treated with fairness and respect.”
“It’s unfortunate we had to get to this point,” Duggan told The Huffington Post. “But we stand united -- our entire player pool, our entire national team.” [...]
The majority of the players’ current pay, they said, comes from the U.S. Olympic Committee, with USA Hockey providing a small, $1,000-per-month stipend over a six-month Olympic training period. Outside those months, the lawyers representing the players said in the release, “USA Hockey pays virtually nothing.”
The women also get less equipment and staff, and development programs for girls lag behind those for boys—but their success speaks for itself.
They’re not alone as a successful women’s team fighting for fair and equal treatment. Members of the U.S. women’s soccer team have similarly filed a federal complaint over pay discrimination, and members of the two teams see their efforts as connected. Soccer player Alex Morgan tweeted in support of the hockey players, and Duggan said “It’s bigger than hockey. It’s bigger than any one sport or individual. It’s about equitable support for females in this country.”
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