Former Olympique Lyonnais player Sara Bjork Gunnarsdottir won a major maternity pay case against the club, FIFPRO, the international soccer players’ union, announced on Tuesday.
FIFPRO issued a public statement congratulating Gunnarsdottir on her victory while also reminding teams that they need to abide by FIFA’s new maternity policy that went into effect in 2021.
“FIFPRO congratulates Sara Bjork Gunnarsdottir on her successful claim against Olympique Lyonnais over the club’s failure to pay her full salary during pregnancy,” FIFPRO said in its statement.
“We are pleased to have assisted her in achieving the first ruling of its kind since FIFA’s maternity regulations came into force in January 2021. It is extremely important for women footballers and the women’s game that these mandatory maternity regulations are both implemented and enforced at the national level.”
In its ruling, FIFA ordered Lyon, a top-flight women’s soccer club in France, to pay Gunnarsdottir’s full salary of €82,000 ($100,661.56) plus interest. Under FIFA’s new maternity policy, clubs are required to pay players their full salary during pregnancy and 14 weeks of maternity leave, but that was not the case for Gunnarsdottir.
Gunnarsdottir, who returned to her native Iceland to have her child, wrote in a Players Tribune article that she received just “a small percentage from social security.”
Not only did the club deny Gunnarsdottir the salary she was entitled to, but she claimed no one from Lyon even reached out to check on her throughout her pregnancy.
“They talked about the ‘duty of care’ of the club, that there was no contact with me during my pregnancy,” Gunnarsdottir wrote. “No one was really checking on me, following up, seeing how I was doing mentally and physically, both as an employee, but also as a human being. Basically, they had a responsibility to look after me, and they didn’t. After Lyon…
