The Canadian national women’s soccer team is protesting unfair treatment and fighting Canada Soccer for equal pay, greater transparency, and higher program funding. They’re one of the best soccer teams in the world. Ranked sixth in FIFA’s global list, the team is a 2020 Olympics gold medal and back-to-back bronze medal winner, and a two-time CONCACAF champion.

The team’s goals — resulting from unsatisfactory work conditions — are not new. In the summer of 2022, Lyndsay Helfrich wrote about the issues in these pages when the Canadian national men’s team went on strike to protest, among other things, equal pay. Ahead of this summer’s World Cup in Australia and New Zealand, the women’s team announced job action in the face of upcoming program cuts and, once again, unequal treatment by Canada Soccer. The organization and the team’s fans love to sing the praises of the squad when they’re on the field: representing, winning. But what about when they’re pushing for something more?

Writing for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, Shireen Ahmed has written an excellent play-by-play of how the situation has unfolded, noting that “[a]cross the world, women’s programs have been treated with disregard” and pointing out that the team has been brought to the brink of exasperation by recalcitrant bosses. “The reality is that job action is not their first choice,” she writes. “Their first choice is to get paid properly and be supported by a federation for doing the work they are brilliant at doing.”