U.S. Women's National Soccer Team/Credit: Leonard Zhukovsky/Shutterstock.com.

On the brink of the women's World Cup soccer matches in France beginning June 7, the Australian union for professional soccer players is joining the U.S. women's team in demanding gender pay parity.

The Australian demand comes as FIFA, the world's largest sports league, on Wednesday reelected its president, Gianni Infantino, who ran unopposed. It also comes as FIFA announced a new agreement to promote gender equality and women's empowerment in soccer. The June 4 agreement, however, doesn't mention pay parity.

Australian attorney John Didulica, who serves as chief executive of Professional Footballers Australia Inc., the union representing both men and women soccer players in that country, said the players will not strike before the World Cup games.

“We see this as a purely financial dispute, so training and playing continues in line with the players' current contracts,” Didulica told Corporate Counsel Wednesday. “Missing football was never an option.”

He explained that increasing the World Cup prize money can serve to promote women's soccer across the world. “The players are only a minority beneficiary of any increased allocation as the lion's share will be redistributed back to national associations—who in turn can reinvest and build their women's programs—such as professional leagues and talent pathways, which may not have existed in the past.”

The union has sent a series of letters urging FIFA to move toward pay equity, beginning last October. The latest letter, on May 29, states, “At no time since our initial letter has FIFA taken steps to address the substance of the matters we have raised or the discrimination which we have brought to its attention.” Didulica said FIFA still has not responded to that letter.

In response to Corporate Counsel, a spokesman for Zurich-based FIFA Wednesday stressed the progress that the group is making on gender equity, such as:

• Double the amount of prize money has been allocated for the FIFA Women's World Cup 2019 than the previous one in 2015, and almost fivefold since the introduction of prize money to the competition for women in 2007.

• Additionally, for this year's event in France, FIFA added $11.5 million for the participating teams' preparations, and $8.5 million in a club benefit program to compensate the clubs that are releasing their players for the World Cup.

• This takes the total figure to $50 million, compared with $15 million for the teams playing in Canada four years ago.

The spokesman also included a statement from FIFA's Chief Women's Football Officer Sarai Bareman, who said: “The vast majority of women's football players across the world are still amateur. That's the most important thing for us … to build the whole ecosystem of the women's game. We have to look at the bigger picture and the prize money for the World Cup teams is only a small part of the investments FIFA is doing for the development of women's football around the entire world.”

The 24 women's teams are set to share in $30 million in World Cup prize money, while the 32 men's team that played in the World Cup last year in Russia shared $400 million. In fact, the champion men's team from France took home $38 million by itself, more than all the women's teams combined will earn in this year's World Cup.

Didulica's letter says that player associations on behalf of several of the participating nations had requested in writing a chance to meet with FIFA in advance of it determining the prize money amount “to discuss this matter and explain the impact of FIFA's discriminatory conduct.”

FIFA did not agree to the meetings. The letter says the union “reserves the rights of the players to have this matter resolved through appropriate means including mediation and arbitration. There is no legal, economic or practical reason why this cannot occur after the tournament.”

The demand comes after the U.S. women's soccer team filed a lawsuit in March against the U.S. Soccer Federation for gender discrimination and unequal pay. The U.S. team, which is scheduled to play its first World Cup match on June 11, is the reigning world champion. The women are represented in their suit by Winston & Strawn's Jeffrey Kessler.

In its response to that suit, the U.S. Soccer Federation has argued that the women's and men's teams are “physically and functionally separate organizations that perform services for U.S. Soccer in physically separate spaces and compete in different competitions, venues, and countries at different times; have different coaches, staff, and leadership; have separate collective bargaining agreements; and have separate budgets that take into account the different revenue that the teams generate.”

Seyfarth Shaw, led by partner Ellen McLaughlin from its Chicago office, is representing the federation. It argued the players have “fundamentally different pay structures for performing different work under their separate collective bargaining agreements that require different obligations and responsibilities.”

As the arguments continue to fly, Australia's union has started a website called Our Goal Is Now, a campaign for increased prize money for women at the World Cup. It says FIFA needs to raise the prize pool from $30 million to $336 million to reach pay equality with the men.

The website cites three FIFA statutes, updated in 2016, as the legal basis for its demand. The statutes are aimed at ensuring gender equality, human rights and anti-discrimination.

The first World Cup matches begin June 8, with Australia playing the next day. After 22 of the 24 teams are eliminated in games throughout June and early July, the remaining two finalists will meet for the championship on July 7 in Lyon, France. The winning women's team is scheduled to take home $4 million.