The U.S. Women’s National Team (USWNT) has become a powerful symbol of coordinated athlete activism, advancing a multifaceted agenda for equal pay, racial equity, LGBTQ+ inclusion, and class accessibility. While the 2022 collective bargaining agreement guaranteeing equal pay was recognized globally, the road to that victory began decades earlier and was shaped and player-led resistance against systemic neglect.

After Title IX was passed in 1972, women’s sports experienced significant growth, but primarily among white, middle- and upper-class athletes with access to school-based athletic programs (Bell 2007). When the USWNT played its first official match in 1985, players had to self-fund travel and wore men’s uniforms—early signs of the institutional disregard for women’s soccer. Despite breakthrough victories like Olympic gold in 1996 and the 1999 World Cup win, structural support remained fragile.

This fragility was especially evident in professional league development. The launch of the Women’s United Soccer Association (WUSA) in 2000 and later the Women’s Professional Soccer (WPS) league in 2007 marked historic steps toward professionalization but were plagued by financial instability and minimal media coverage. Their struggles reflected the broader economic precarity of women’s sports, where visibility and viability were tied to inconsistent sponsorship and public interest (Cooky and Messner 2013). These failed leagues set the stage for the formation of the National Women’s Soccer League (NWSL) in 2013, where USWNT players would finally gain a more stable platform, not only to play, but to organize.

Within this context, Megan Rapinoe, Becky Sauerbrunn, Midge Purce, and Ali Krieger emerged as leaders of a new generation of athlete-advocates. The team’s 2016 equal pay lawsuit and 2019 World Cup activism brought labor rights, gender equity, racial representation, and LGBTQ+ visibility into a unified front. Rapinoe’s open criticism of political and cultural systems of oppression, Krieger’s advocacy for queer youth, Purce’s challenge to soccer’s exclusionary “pay-to-play” model, and Sauerbrunn’s framing of pay equity as a labor issue all demonstrate the team’s intersectionality  (Krieger 2021; Linehan 2022; Sauerbrunn 2023).

The USWNT’s activism illustrates how athletic labor intersects with broader social movements. Their collective efforts represent not just a call for fairness on the field but a coordinated demand for inclusion, visibility, and justice in the structures that govern sport itself (Cooky and Messner 2013).