In the USWNT’s past, there has been a lot of gold. Just to name a few awards, the USWNT has won four Olympic golds and three World Cups. How could they possibly get any better?

Well, no matter how many times the U.S. Women’s National Team have proven themselves, they still are not treated equally to the men of the game.  

Let us take the NWSL draft, for example. It could not be seen just flipping the switch on the TV and seeing it on ESPN or Fox Sports 1. It was not even talked about on ESPN (because apparently America is too busy watching their men play hand egg). It was barely mentioned anywhere.

The only way to even keep up with it was checking out the chat on Twitter from the NWSL. As for the people who do not have Twitter, like me? I was going from website to website to try to figure out what was going on.

Another case where women were not treated as well as men? After the 2014 World Cup, the German men were given $35 million for winning the tournament. That’s a little over a million for everyone. And what about the women? $2 million- not $2 million per player, but $2 million for the whole team. For winning the biggest title in soccer. If the men lose in the first round in the World Cup, they get four times that according to the Women’s Sports Foundation. This I do not understand.  

When you treat the women as a lower class of human being it really messes things up. It leaks into other things.And this just does not occur behind closed doors, because now I am not talking about FIFA, I am talking about even lower branches of soccer. Take my old youth club, for instance.  I used to play in a small town in Colorado. Every year we would sell raffle tickets to earn money for our club. The team who sold the highest raffle tickets got to win a prize. It sounded like a good idea, but it turned out to be the exact opposite.

The boys got tickets to go zip-lining and won Beats by Dre headphones. What did the girls get? Bowling tickets and tickets to WATCH the Kid’s Adventure Race (which most of us were actually competing in).  

So, what FIFA is doing is setting standards. They are setting standards that men are greater than women, and those standards are affecting me. They may also be what prevent women from playing soccer in the first place.  Say you joined the NWSL. That’s awesome, right?

Some of the players are only making $6,000 a year and, at the highest, $30,000. In the MLS, the league minimum is $35,125. A man’s lowest salary is a woman’s highest in professional soccer in the United States. If you were a younger woman who is really good at soccer, but couldn’t even make enough money to live, would you want to play for an NWSL team? Probably not.  

Now let’s think of this: Where would our nation be without women’s soccer?  I can give you a few ideas of where we would not be. Soccer would not be on the map in the U.S. Our men have had 20 World Cups, yet they have not won one. However, our women have had 7 World Cups and we have won three of them? The men aren’t the bigger brother of the women; the women are the bigger sister. Without women’s soccer, we would have never heard of big names like Alex Morgan, Carli Lloyd, Abby Wambach, Sydney Leroux, Hope Solo, Christie Rampone, Tobin Heath and so many more. There are even names that are not as well known (but deserve to be) such as Sammy and Kristie Mewis, Nikki Marshall, Allie Long, Emily Menges and Crystal Dunn (although we are hearing her name more and more). Without these names, we would not have anyone to look up to and try to beat.

What I am really trying to say is that we need to break down the barrier of sexism. I want little boys to be able to look up to people like Alex Morgan and say, “I want to be like her,” just as any other girl would look up to Messi and say, “I want to be like him.”  There is no such thing as “women’s soccer.” It is soccer (To us Americans anyways; to the rest of the world, it is football). We all play the sport for the same reason. We all love the game.  

There is truly no difference within the men’s and women’s games. Stop telling me that there is. Tell me that women cannot run as fast as men? Look at Alex Morgan. Tell me that women are not as strong as men? Umm… have you seen Christie Rampone’s arms? Tell me that women do not have the right footwork? Please look at Tobin Heath because I am 100 percent sure that she would find a way to nutmeg a mermaid. Tell me that women cannot play as well as men? Oh, for the love of the game, please reread this paragraph.

I think more than enough players are ready for a change. Take a look at Wambach who states, “We want to be treated like the men.” That’s the bottom line. Women want to be treated as they would treat any other man on this planet. I honestly think that some people are getting too caught up with the men’s game. People are forgetting over half of the population.  

I am tired of feeling discriminated against. I am tired of being told that I cannot do something because of my gender, because what does it matter? It is like telling someone that they cannot drive their car on the street simply because it is a Toyota. I am tired of waiting and FIFA telling me that in 80 years men’s and women’s salaries will be the same. I am tired of being given false hope. I am tired of waiting. I am ready for a change now.  

And the WNT is trying to give us change.

Hope Solo, Megan Rapinoe, Alex Morgan, Carli Lloyd  and Becky Sauerbrunn have been doing a campaign called equal play, equal pay. My cousin, Cailey, and I have tried to voice this out. At the last game we went to in Kansas City, we made posters for this campaign (pictured in the first photo of this article).

After the game, Hope Solo came to us and said, “We’ll keep fighting for you guys.” That brought a few tears to my eyes.

Overall, I am really just trying to get the word out. The women are payed 75% less than the men; they’ve earned $10 million for the federation in the past year, while the men have lost $2 million. They have won more, accomplished more, yet they are still paid less simply because they were born female.

Let’s get these ladies paid.