World's Top Women Soccer Players Still Getting Second-Class Treatment

In a depressingly apt metaphor for gender inequality in women's soccer, U.S. Women's National Team goalkeeper Hope Solo shared a photo proving that the world's top women players are literally competing on an uneven -- and very patchy -- playing field. 

Ahead of Wednesday night's championship match against Germany for the inaugural SheBelieves Cup, Solo offered a look at the sorry condition at FAU Stadium in Boca Raton, Florida.  

The so-called "grass ceiling" has become shorthand for the glaring inequality that pervades women's soccer. When it comes to prize money, for example, the World Cup winning women's team got $2 million, while the men's team that lost in the first round got $8 million. Huh?

Last year's tournament was the first World Cup ever -- men's or women's -- to be played on artificial turf.  The players noted the artificial turf significantly changes the style of play and is much harder on the player's bodies -- which in pro soccer, are their livelihood. 

During their World Cup victory tour months later, the team refused to play on the torn up, outdated, rock-strewn turf field in Hawaii for a friendly match against Trinidad and Tobago. Even their coach cut practice down to 30 minutes to prevent potential injuries.

FAU stadium for the SheBelieves Cup is a grass field, but the USWNT players have previously stated the issue isn't simply turf versus grass, it's about "field conditions and player safety." 

Men's teams, by contrast, are not subjected  playing on sub-par fields. (Or expected to stay in the same hotel as their opponents.  Or encouraged to wear tighter shorts to show off their bodies.)

The "turf war" even sparked a 2015 gender discrimination lawsuit ahead of the World Cup in Canada, thought it was later withdrawn. 

The team's last official collective bargaining agreement bars the women from striking -- over field conditions or otherwise. The more current but less official "memorandum of understanding," meanwhile, is at the root of another battle the women are fighting against the U.S. Soccer Federation. 

Ironically, on International Women's Day, Solo and her fellow female players' call for "#EqualMeansEqual" remains just a hashtag.