The Equalizers: How Women Are Revolutionizing Soccer

A fascinating look at how women’s soccer players have become a driving force for feminist activism—from the battle for equal pay, to LGBTQIA+ rights and the fight against sexual violence.

After years of toiling in obscurity, women soccer players around the world have broken through to the mainstream, pulling in billions of spectators, scooping up record amounts of prize money, and landing major sponsorship deals. Once derided as playing a lesser form of the beautiful game, players like Megan Rapinoe, Alex Morgan, Abby Wambach, Lauren James, Khadija Shaw, and Aitana Bonmatí have become some of the most respected athletes on the planet.

But that doesn’t mean that the playing field is level—far from it. Men still out-earn women by a factor of four to one in international competitions and, as the whole world saw when former Spanish football federation president Luis Rubiales forcibly kissed Jenni Hermoso during the medal ceremony of the 2023 World Cup final, players are as vulnerable to sexual violence as women and gender minorities everywhere. So while women soccer players are more successful than ever, the game they play remains largely hostile to them. These conditions have led soccer players to become some of the most prominent and effective gender equality campaigners in the world. By striving to be the best at what they do, these athletes have shed light on some of the world’s most pernicious gender gaps—and showed how to close them.

The Equalizers tells the story of how, despite the best efforts of the men who run it, soccer has become a global laboratory for feminist activism.