SAN FRANCISCO (KCBS RADIO) – Brandi Chastain, author of perhaps the most iconic on-field moment in U.S. soccer history, said she felt decades worth of emotion on Wednesday over an off-field moment that could prove no less memorable.
The U.S. Soccer Federation on Wednesday announced it had struck agreements with its men's and women's national teams to pay each equally per game for the first time in its history, with players on each team pooling World Cup prize money and splitting it equally during the next two cycles.
Chastain tweeted on Wednesday that she cried "tears of joy” over the announcement. She told KCBS Radio's Jeff Bell and Patti Reising in an interview on Wednesday afternoon that it was "very exhausting" trying to explain why the four-time World Cup-winning women's team – the far more successful of the two programs – didn't receive the same financial support as the men.
"I think there's a lot of relief," Chastain told Jeff Bell and Patti Reising. "There's obvious joy. There's belief now where we can encourage young girls."
Chastain, a San Jose native, starred locally at the University of California Berkeley and Santa Clara University before winning two World Cups and two Olympic gold medals with the national team. She scored the deciding penalty in the 1999 World Cup Final, sending the Rose Bowl into delirium as she celebrated by removing her jersey and falling to her knees.
The U.S. women have won two more World Cups and two more Olympic gold medals since Chastain's retirement in 2004, and the calls for equal pay among the national teams have only grown during that time. American fans chanted "Equal pay! Equal pay!" as the women lifted the World Cup trophy in France three summers ago.
Chastain said U.S. Soccer President Cindy Parlow Cone – her former teammate and roommate – brought a fresh perspective to what were often contentious negotiations between the women’s national team and the federation, while the "persistent work of women in soccer" and beyond was boosted by the "amplification of voices that have been unheard" thanks to social media.
"I think the collision of all of those things has just provided this moment," she said. "It's not one thing, it's everything."
Jerry Smith, the Santa Clara University women's soccer coach and Chastain’s husband, previously lamented to her that young girls are told “that they can do anything, that they can be anything. And yet, you don’t get paid equally.” According to the Pew Research Center, women earned – on average – 84% of what men did in 2020, while other gender disparities widened during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Chastain said she believes that American soccer's progress can inspire other industries, finally allowing adults "to tell girls, honestly, you can be whatever it is you dream."
"I don't think it's going to be contained to sports,” she said. "I think it absolutely will exist everywhere, whether that be in the newsroom, in the boardroom, on the tennis court, on the basketball court, on the soccer field, in the courtrooms, wherever. This is just an example of what can happen. It's not what can happen in sports."
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