A YOUNG GIRL sits on her father’s shoulders at a women’s soccer game in California, where fierce women play on the field, wise women own the professional soccer club, and women on the U.S. national team just won the right to be paid equally. The father locks eyes with Abby Wambach, a veteran in the fight for equal pay and a winner of two Olympic gold medals and a World Cup title. The father points up to his daughter and shouts to Abby: “This is the only world she’ll ever know.”
It’s commonplace for institutions to fail to honor a woman’s worth—from rulings in domestic violence cases to recent decisions from the highest courts that restrict reproductive options. But the U.S. Women’s National Soccer Team is not common. And they are not used to losing. The team, which has won four World Cups and four Olympic gold medals, is considered the world’s best women’s soccer team, and yet the players’ efforts to be compensated fairly have been an uphill battle for decades. For instance, under the most recent collective bargaining agreements, a player on the women’s team, according to The Washington Post, would earn about 89 percent of the compensation U.S. men received for a series of exhibition games. That disparity was true in 2018 and 2019, when the U.S. women won the World Cup and the U.S. men failed to qualify for the tourney.
In May, the way these women dominated the soccer world finally translated into enhanced legal and fiscal power when a first-of-its-kind collective bargaining agreement created true pay equity in the sport and birthed a new future for women athletes. In the new agreement, the women’s and men’s teams will split earnings and receive benefits equally. For example, the men’s team will receive paid childcare at all practices and matches and the women’s team is guaranteed equal field and travel accommodations as well as health care and retirement benefits. This collective victory highlights that when women win, we all win.
In my theology as a Christian pastor (and former collegiate athlete), the tangibility of heaven on Earth happens in fleeting moments of agency and grace. For my pastoral and athletic heart, heaven on Earth is a soccer field filled with women of valor sprinting toward glory and people of all ages, races, and nationalities shouting praises of “GOOOAL” in awe of a World Cup victory.
Midge Purce, a forward on the national team and a member of the collective bargaining committee, said that, thanks to this off-the-field win, young girls will “grow up recognizing their value instead of fighting to find it.” Is there anything more aligned with the kindom of heaven than each person recognizing their divine value and society affirming and cherishing that worth? I’m grateful that the eyes of the young girl watching that soccer game from her father’s shoulders can see a world where women are valued not just for their successes but for their being. And more so, I’m grateful that even for a moment, staring out at the cheering fans and fresh-cut pitch, she, and we, can see a small slice of heaven on Earth.
Rev. Kaeley McEvoy is the the fellowship program director and staff chaplain at Sojourners.
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