Argentine women waging pitch battle against inequality

"It's unacceptable for soccer clubs and national soccer federations in South America, or anywhere else, to treat women players as second-class citizens with vastly inferior conditions to male players."

Argentina's women's national team recently qualified for the World Cup for the first time in 12 years. Sanchez is not likely to make the team that is headed to France, and the legal action does not involve the national team.

But even the national team's play-ers have struggled financially. They went on strike in 2017 after their daily stipends of about $10 went unpaid.

They also lack proper changing rooms, for a while they trained on a dirt field, and they are often forced to travel long distances to play a game and return on the same day to save on hotel costs.

The female players were also angered when Adidas, the brand that sponsors a few members of the national teams of both genders, unveiled the new shirt for last year's Women's Copa America with models rather than players.

And while the men's Argentine league draws big crowds and makes millions of dollars, a woman at a top club is often forced to split her time between soccer and a second job to survive.

"There is no possibility, no matter how good a woman is in Argentina today, to make a living from it," said Brenda Elsey, a professor at Hofstra University in Long Island, New York, who specializes in the history of soccer politics in Latin America.

"I don't think any Argentine player in 1931 (when soccer became professional in the country) felt the same kind of outright hostility and neglect as women players feel today."

Elsey, who recently traveled to Argentina to research the issue and has a photo of women playing soccer dating back as far as 1923, pointed to a recent example. When Estudiantes won the league title, she said the Argentine soccer federation forgot to give them the trophy. The players tried to take it in their stride by celebrating with a plastic jug.

The story didn't come as a shock.

"Argentina is not an exception to the rule of gender discrimination in Latin America. It's quite common," said Elsey, who is also co-author of Futbolera: A History of Women and Sports in Latin America.

In neighboring Chile, another World Cup qualifier headed to France this year, women's soccer is also amateur. Coaches have complained that men's clubs affiliated with female teams sometimes won't even lend their counterparts fields for practice and only supply them with one set of shirts.

Instead, many top female players head to the United States to play in the NWSL and get paid, while Brazil, Mexico and Colombia are among regional countries that have professional leagues. But there is still prejudice, and ignorance, to overcome.

For instance, the president of Colombian club Deportes Tolima, Gabriel Camargo, described women's soccer as a "tremendous breeding ground for lesbianism".

CONMEBOL, the governing body of South American soccer, is trying to level the playing field. It recently announced that for a men's team to qualify for the Copa Libertadores, it must also have a women's team.