Fabulous Las Vegas is now a sports town and is home to two national champions: the Vegas Golden Knights and the Las Vegas Aces. In the past year, I have witnessed firsthand the success of each team, but it wasn't until recently that I became aware of just how differently these two teams were being recognized.

In the wake of their victory in June, the Golden Knights were celebrated throughout the city, dominating the media. With a historic win and such an exuberant response, it is no surprise that many people, including some elected officials, ignored the fact that the WNBA Aces also were Nevada-based national champions.

Because of these very different reactions, I became acutely aware of the stark difference in treatment and attention given to male and female athletes and how we still need to address equity issues in women’s and men’s sports. However, this issue reaches far beyond Las Vegas, and a good place to turn this discussion for a moment is toward the U.S. women’s national soccer team.

In 2019, the U.S. Women's National Team (USWNT) stood center stage as World Cup champions. As they prepare to dominate once again in the 2023 World Cup, which just started, let’s reflect on the team’s success, not just its talent and domination on the field. They have proven their superiority in that arena countless times, but I want to focus on the team's exemplary fight for equity in women's sports. 

A win for the team happened in 2022 with an equal pay lawsuit settlement. Such pivotal success is as much a result of hard work, ambition and determination as any win on the field, and it was much more than a symbolic milestone. To see it any other way is to be as closed-minded as some who made baseless arguments against the team’s lawsuit.

Is pay equity a bad thing? The answer should be obvious, but many people reject the concept when applied to U.S. soccer and to female athletes across the board. The women involved in the national team’s quest for progress were met with condemning scrutiny, which is, unfortunately, nothing new. Our society is resistant to fundamental change in many areas and has been for a long time. In fact, it was not long ago that people opposed women’s sports altogether. 

Now, women are engaging in sports globally. So why do some people still reject pay equity in sports? Is there a single ounce of reason to justify the soccer federation’s years of persistent obstruction? Pay equity is a fight for respect and dignity, a fight to bring women’s sports up, not to bring men’s sports down, which is why the U.S. Men’s National Team (USMNT) put its full support behind the women’s fight for pay equity. 

Let’s take a moment to think critically about the two primary arguments used to shut down pay equity progress and uphold the status quo. 

The first argument is that the USWNT has sometimes made more money than the USMNT. Pay equity opponents argue that this proves everything is already as it should be within the sport. However, as Megan Rapinoe put it in her CBS This Morning interview regarding the judge’s pay equity decision, this perspective “misses the whole point.”

The major flaw in this argument is that, in the instances where the women’s team made a fraction more than the men’s team, the women’s team drastically and significantly outperformed the men’s team. And while it is true the women did make more money than the men in certain years, succeeding under inferior conditions demonstrates the tenacity of the women’s team, not the existence of equitable conditions.

The second argument is that the women’s team was offered a collective bargaining agreement that matched the men’s team and refused it. This argument is wrong. In 2017, the USWNT was offered a pay-for-play agreement that it did not accept because it was not truly equal. Although many use this refusal to justify their argument that the women turned down an equal opportunity, the collective bargaining agreement was unequal to the men’s contract in terms of structure and pay.

Most people would agree that if you play well and win tournaments, you should be rewarded. In the above instance, if the women’s team had been on a contract on par with the men’s pay-for-play collective bargaining agreement, the women would have made substantially more.

This fact and others translated into a successful lawsuit.

The U.S. Soccer Federation is now the first to equalize World Cup earnings. This milestone cannot be understated. The USWNT’s fight for pay equity resulted in a legal precedent laying the groundwork for further victories. 

So, how do we move forward and build on this success nationwide and specifically in Las Vegas?

Well, according to Cheryl Cookly’s comprehensive study at Purdue University, a mere 5.4 percent of airtime is dedicated to women’s sports news and highlights. With numbers this skewed, it is unsurprising that men’s “big three sports” — basketball, baseball and football — dominate live television with a combined coverage of 75.2 percent.While it is true that broadcast stations and news outlets base decisions on viewership statistics, if these capitalist organizations never took a risk on something new we would all still be watching Laurel and Hardy reruns. 

Any continuing anti-equity argument along the lines of “women’s sports generate less revenue,” which doesn’t actually address the reasons why this is true, cannot be taken seriously when you have such disparate marketing metrics. People cannot support a team they cannot see or learn anything about. So, fans must push to get women’s sports on national television and every social media platform on par with men’s sports. By doing this, we can expand a vibrant women’s sports consumer base with a sense of community and excitement that is so essential to sports culture. In essence, my proposed solution is for the consumers of women’s sports to be the driving force for change.

Thank goodness not everyone pointed to the USWNT lawsuit and said, “OK, we’ve given these women equity; so, women should stop advocating for sports equity now.” But more of us must see and recognize the full context of women’s sports and challenge people who downplay the fight for equality. We must advocate for systemic solutions.

This brings me back to the Las Vegas Aces. Many more Nevadans are now supporting the Aces, which is, in turn, getting their games aired on national TV and generating more revenue. As we saw from the way elected leaders treated the Golden Knights compared to how they treated the Aces, we also need to contact our elected officials and remind them that under federal law when taxpayer money is spent, it must be spent equitably between men and women.

Derek Hagewen is an incoming senior at CSN High School West. He has been playing soccer since he was 5 years old.