Women’s Hockey Team Threatens Boycott
March 22, 2017
The defending USA Hockey national team champions are planning a boycott with the start of training camp for the world championship on March 31.
The reason? Fair and equal pay.
The women’s hockey team has won six out of the eight last championship tournaments and is at the top of the sport for the last decade.
The boycott is not just to create fair pay but also fair support for women’s hockey to grow the program compared to men’s.
John Langel, attorney for the women, said in an interview with the Washington Post that the U.S. spends $3.5 million supporting its Under-20 men’s hockey team and that there is no parallel development program for young women.
USA hockey only spends $1 million each year to support the women’s national team.
“We’re at the point where we need to make a move and stand up for what we believe in,” Megan Duggan, captain for the women’s team, said in a New York Times article on March 15, “what we think is right and fair to make progress and not only for women in hockey, but in other sports.”
All 23 players in the women’s national team were sent emails on March 16 with a 5 p.m. ET deadline to confirm whether they intended to play in the IIHF World Championships in Plymouth, Michigan. Rumors were circulating that if players did not accept, USA hockey would start looking for replacement players.
Federation spokesman, Dave Fischer, said in a phone interview with Johnette Howard, ESPN’s senior writer, that claims by players that USA Hockey would field an alternate team rather than negotiate a new deal was false. Fischer did, however, say if USA Hockey received 23 ‘nos’ from the players, then they would have to start looking at alternative plans for the world championships.
On Monday, negotiations were held between USA Hockey and the representatives for the women’s team in Philadelphia.
The meetings broke off without an agreement, but both sides left with optimism that enough progress could be made later in the week that would persuade the team to report to training camp on Wednesday.