21-07-2025
Women In Sports: Why Nothing Has Changed About Women And Fair Wages
Randi Braun, CEO of Something Major, is the Wall Street Journal Bestselling author of Something Major: The New Playbook for Women at Work.
Just days after the 62nd anniversary of the Equal Pay Act, news broke that the Dallas Cowboys cheerleaders were receiving a 400% pay increase. What looked, on the surface, like a tremendous win for women and fair wages was just the latest reminder that more than 60 years after the Equal Pay Act became law, women are still forced to fight for the baseline.
It's a cliché to say, 'The more things change, the more they stay the same.' But just three years ago, on the 59th anniversary of the Equal Pay Act, I wrote here in Forbes about a similar story, arguing that we were misinterpreting the U.S. women's soccer team's six-year battle for pay equity as an unequivocal win. As I noted at the time:
'Despite the bubblegum-and-girl-power headlines like the Washington Post's 'It took a revolution, but the U.S. women's soccer team got what it deserved,' the settlement reminds us how far we still have to go on pay equity—not how far we've come.'
What struck me then—and still does now—is that after a six-year legal battle, the U.S. women's national soccer team finally secured equal pay, but something was missing, both in their compensation and the frenzied media coverage.
Despite consistently outperforming the men's team in results, revenue and household popularity, the women weren't rewarded for overdelivering; they were simply brought up to the baseline—paid the same salary as a team of so-called 'peers' who were clearly underperforming them.
How could we call that a 'historic raise'? It didn't feel right that an organization could spend six years fighting its star talent in court only to 'reward' them with a compensation package equal to colleagues with a fraction of their impact.
But then again, this is women's sports, so let's take this out of sports for a moment. Imagine one sales team—let's call them the East Coast Territory Team—consistently hits revenue targets and tops client success metrics. Now imagine they're being paid less than the West Coast Territory Team, which is underperforming them across the board, and for six years, management insists that the East team shouldn't expect to earn more than, or even baseline as much as, their underperforming peers. Any reasonable person would say that makes no sense.
That's why I was stunned at the time, when U.S. Soccer's president told the New York Times (registration required), 'It wasn't an easy process to get to this point for sure. The most important thing here is that we are moving forward, and we are moving forward together.'
What is so hard about paying women what they're worth?
It's a question I asked then and find myself asking again now—this time not from the courtroom or boardroom, but on the NFL sidelines (and while binge-watching Netflix on my couch).
When I saw the headline (registration required) that the Dallas Cowboys cheerleaders (also known as the DCC) were getting a 400% raise, I was excited—but also skeptical. After watching the Netflix series America's Sweethearts, I was struck by how exploitative some of the practices within the iconic DCC organization appeared to be. Cowboys chief brand officer Charlotte Jones even said, on camera (registration required), that part of their compensation package was a passion for dance.
Last I checked, 'passion for dance' doesn't pay for rent, your Wi-Fi bill or the insanely expensive beauty regimen the dancers are expected to maintain.
According to a prior court case (registration required), at one point DCC members 'received roughly $7 per hour with no overtime pay and a flat rate of $200 per game, which, in total, ended up being less than the annual pay for the team's mascot, Rowdy.'
I'm thrilled these dancers are getting a 400% bump in their pay, but I'm also reminded that even when we make things "right" for women and their wages, they're still not always fair. Here are three lessons every woman should keep in mind when evaluating any compensation deal:
1. Know the difference between a raise and a right-sizing.
We often call it a 'raise' (which is a reward for excellent performance) when it's really a 'right-sizing' (a correction to realign compensation to an employee's scope of responsibilities). Too often, when an organization makes an adjustment to women's compensation, like they did for the women of DCC or U.S. Soccer, they call it a raise. For both the DCC and the women of U.S. Soccer, this wasn't a merit-based increase. It was simply a right-sizing to get compensation to the most barely acceptable baseline.
2. The devil is in the details.
One of the core lessons of this story is that women have to read the fine print. As the Cowboys Organization-sanctioned America's Sweethearts series revealed, the physical toll on the women of DCC is grueling. Season 1 documented current dancers with career-limiting injuries and alumni whose injuries had been life-changing. Yet, in this new deal, the women still don't get health insurance (registration required).
3. It's not about you—it's about the system.
You are worth it. The fact that you're not always paid your value isn't about your talent or output. It's about systemic bias. Women, on the whole, still earn 82 cents on the dollar (a gap that widens for women of color) here in the United States. That is something we should note as a societal embarrassment, not a personal failure to negotiate our salaries.
When President John F. Kennedy signed the Equal Pay Act of 1963, he promised it would prevent 'arbitrary discrimination against women in the payment of wages.' I celebrate the women of DCC on their long-overdue right-sizing. But I also hope we'll view them as just the latest example of why we still have a long way to go before that promise becomes reality.
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