Three years ago, the U.S. Women’s National Soccer Team reached a historic collective bargaining agreement with the U.S. Soccer Federation that guaranteed equal pay and better working conditions for both the women’s team and the men’s team. As the women’s soccer players fought for equitable working conditions, they also found a profound way to give back by funding a program to support female entrepreneurs.
“That economic justice fight is something that’s a bit of an extension of our pay equity fight,” Tierna Davidson, USWNT center back and current president of the USWNT Players Association, told Newsweek. “We wanted to partner with someone that was established in that space and could help us help small businesses get on their feet, whether it was starting or continuing to invest in their business.”
That partner was Kiva, the social venture firm that provides microloans to women and minority-owned businesses across the world. Through Kiva, the Players Association set up a revolving loan fund and a crowdfunding platform to allow women’s soccer fans to support female entrepreneurs around the country.
To date, over 5,100 businesses have received loans through this program, totaling $400,000. The initiative won a Gold Halo Award in 2023 for its social impact success and has a goal to lend out $2.5 million as the revolving fund grows.
Davidson, who plays professionally for the National Women’s Soccer League’s Gotham FC, won a gold medal in the 2024 Olympic Games on Team USA and was also on the bargaining committee as the USWNT Players Association sought out its new contract in the wake of the 2019 lawsuit that kicked off the fight for equal pay. She was one of the youngest players on the 2019 squad that won Team USA’s fourth World Cup as fans called attention to the players’ cause with chants for equal pay.
“Every conversation with U.S. Soccer’s legal team, we always had at least one player represented on it,” Annie Reid, director of Strategic Partnerships and Business for the USWNT Players Association, told Newsweek. “They were really, really involved.”
Stars like Megan Rapinoe and Alex Morgan fought for equal pay, even though their careers would end before the majority of the improvements in pay and working conditions took place.
“With that win, that was a long time coming, players started to think about … Where else do we want to have impact? There’s a variety of ways that we at the Players Association, with our players, have worked to have that impact,” Reid said.
Reid shared that the larger economic justice mission also includes improving access to youth sports, where pay-for-play can prevent people from earning opportunities in sports, and driving equal pay for female athletes around the world.
“Looking at the steps that other national teams have taken with their own women’s teams to improve their working conditions [and] improve their pay to more model their men’s side is so important,” Davidson said. “That was such a large part of the battle as well as understanding that it wasn’t just for us, but it was for national teams globally. We’ve seen that drastically improve over the past couple of years. It’s super evident, too, in how competitive the women’s game is.”
They’ve also improved the moneymaking potential of the name, image, and likeness of their players by driving sales of merchandise. Despite ongoing pay inequality globally, women’s teams around the world have also pushed for better pay and working conditions as a result of USWNT’s success.
“These women are using their platform to talk about gender equity, economic justice, equal pay. These are all systemic problems, not just in sports, but throughout many different industries,” Tess Murphy, director of corporate partnerships for Kiva, told Newsweek. “They understood what economic justice and empowerment meant for them, and they wanted to extend that opportunity to other women around the country.”
Six months after the signing of this collective bargaining agreement, the U.S. House of Representatives passed the Equal Pay for Team USA Act, guaranteeing equal pay for men and women across all Olympic sports. Senator Maria Cantwell, D-Wash., who co-sponsored the bill with Sen. Shelley Moore Capito, R-W.Va., a signal of the broader impact of the USWNT’s battle.
“I … want to thank heroes like Megan Rapinoe and Alex Morgan, who brought that case against U.S. Soccer,” Cantwell said. “U.S. women’s soccer led the charge after winning the World Cup and making it clear to everyone that women athletes deserve equal pay.”
Kiva’s data suggests that female small-business owners have a high community impact but are underserved in access to funding. These loans help them make key investments in starting or growing their business.
One such business owner is Jimbi Mboob, who owns Smiling Coast Beauty Salon in Madison, Wisconsin. Through Kiva and its USWNT partnership, she secured a $14,500 loan to double the size of her store, make interior improvements and invest in social media for marketing.
“My credit wasn’t that great, and I have four kids,” Mboob said. “Resources were limited. If I could get the resources to start up, getting my own chairs and booths, it will be better. So I used that to buy chairs and space that I rented for a few months just to get me on track.”
Mboob shared that she’s hiring people to help them get into the field of braiding and has also hosted community events, including a Juneteenth youth function that centered around hair care. She said that she would have never had the opportunity to expand her presence or give back without this loan.
“It’s a lot to deal with, but through these little resources … I’m able to get more clients coming in through my door, and I’m able to extend that [work opportunity] to other women like me,” Mboob said. “I feel like I’m not only benefiting, those people benefit, too, and the community that I’m serving benefits.”
The USWNT-Kiva partnership focused on supporting small businesses in cities where they were playing. They’ve also set up a small business fund for businesses impacted by the wildfires in Southern California.
Many USWNT members, like Morgan, have their own business ventures. Their challenging personal experiences in the marketing and sponsorship world, despite being popular pro athletes, helped them realize the need to boost women-owned businesses, especially because they do not get as much funding or support from the financial services industry.
“Even with their name and the money that they have, they saw that there is a tougher time for a business to get off the ground, particularly for women and for BIPOC owners. They have experienced that themselves,” Reid said, emphasizing that challenges earning branding and sponsorship deals for the USWNT Players Association and its members is another example of the business barriers that the players faced. “Their thought is, If I’m experiencing this as the known name that I have, what is that like for your average person?”
The players embraced the larger impact they had the potential to make.
“We understood that the fight for pay equity was not just for us,” Davidson said. “It’s not just for our own benefit, but it’s also for the benefit of many women out there, of many individuals looking to us as an inspiration.”
For Davidson, the responsibilities of being on the bargaining committee and now president of the USWNTPA are certainly a lot to add to a professional athlete’s loaded schedule, but she said she fell in love with learning about the work that goes on behind the scenes to operate a high-level sports team.
“It was really interesting to be able to look under the metaphorical hood of the PA and of the Federation and kind of see the inner workings that didn’t have to do so much with soccer but a little bit more of the logistical side of things and understanding how much work goes into planning,” Davidson said. “I take it as a responsibility, but I also get a lot of joy from it.”
“They really wanted to use their platform of both their name … but also their social media platform and their wide reach to tell this story of economic empowerment and of how hard it is to be a woman-owned small business,” Murphy said.
The USWNT has a friendly matchup against Canada on July 2 in Washington, D.C., kicking off at 7:30 p.m.
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