USA Women’s Hockey Team Boycotts Worlds
Rest assured, Susan B. Anthony never played hockey. But if she had–if by some cosmic fluke she travelled forward in time and got selected to the USA Women’s Hockey team–no doubt she would have been among the United States women presently boycotting the IHLF World Championship games. For 14 months, the women had been in talks with USA Hockey, negotiating for fair wages and gender equitable support. After they felt that talks had stalled, the team announced they intended to boycott the games. Now, a day after the announcement, USA Hockey offered a deadline to the women’s squad asking for word on their threatened deadline.
All 23 members of the team were contacted via email with a deadline of 5 p.m. ET Thursday to individually confirm whether they intend to play in the IIHF World Championships that begin March 31 in Plymouth, Michigan. With the deadline passed, no word has been released on whether the team has responded as a whole. The league, according to federation spokesman Dave Fischer, will not move forward in fielding an alternate team, despite the players’ contention to the contrary.
“I don’t know what the result will be,” Fischer stated in a phone interview Thursday. “But we’ve said definitively that we’re going to field a team. You’re a bright person. You can figure it out as much as I can. If we get back 23 ‘nos’ that ‘We’re not going to play,’ we’re going to have to make alternative arrangements for worlds.”
Hilary Knight has played on the last two USA Olympic team. She says her and her teammates are being treated financially as an ‘afterthought’. After 14 months of essentially fruitless negotiations, the USA women’s team made the only power move they felt they truly had: choosing to sit out their prime-time matchup against Canada on March 31.
When asked in an interview with ESPN how she would respond to USA Hockey’s email, Knight said, “We’ll have to see. We as a group are so unified and passionate about this cause and changing not only the current situation but for the younger generations… impacting them in a positive way. So we’re going to stand by what we believe is right. Unanimously we are all unified in our decision to… potentially sit this World Championships out if significant progress isn’t made.”
As part of their demands, the women’s team wants fair and equal wages that span the four-year cycle leading up to each Olympics. Thus far, USA Hockey has been less than cooperative.
“We don’t have full-time employees as athletes and we are not going to — it’s not going to be the way forward,” Fischer said. “The thing is, they know that. We have been clear with them.”
Team USA defenseman Monique Lamoureux-Morando said in a statement:
“It’s hard to believe that, in 2017, we still have to fight so hard for basic equitable support. But when I think about the women who paved the way for our team—and when I see girls at rinks around the country who are dedicated to pursuing big dreams and look to us to lead by example—it’s well overdue for us to speak up about unfair treatment, even if it means sacrificing an opportunity to represent our country. We owe the next generation more than that. We owe it to ourselves to stand up for what is right.”
The USA Women’s Hockey team has won three state world championships. Currently, USA is tied with Canada for the most medals in IIHF World Championship history with 17. It has won gold seven of the past nine times the event has been held. The American women have also medaled each of the five times women’s hockey has been contested in the Winter Olympics, including winning gold in 1998.
That’s how big the stakes are for this boycott. They’re choosing to forgo the chance at a four-peat because they recognize the gravity of their situation.
The fight for equal wages has been raging for a long time. White women, on average, make 78 cents to a man’s dollar. That number decreases significantly for women of color and hispanic women in this country. By choosing to boycott the World Championships, the women’s hockey team is making a clear statement that things have to change and fast. As of now, the USA Women’s Soccer team is wrapped up in a similar fight for equal wages and equitable support.
In a world where sport is dominated by men, where companies market primarily to male demographics, where NBA players make 15 million dollars a year to a WNBA player’s 100 thousand a year, it is paramount that these women make this stand, that they use what social capital and professional leverage they have to usher in an era of greater gender equity in professional athletics, not just for themselves but, as Hilary Knight says, for younger generations.
