'There’s No Status That Can Protect You’: Megan Rapinoe On the Inescapable Reality of Pay Discrimination

Another year, another day to commemorate the gap between men and women’s pay. That’s right, it is Equal Pay Day, a day where brands, corporations, and governments pretend for an entire 24 hours that they are committed to closing the gender pay gap by either selling you something or outsourcing the problem to another organization that will eventually, supposedly deal with it. On Tuesday morning, the House Oversight Committee hosted a meeting to examine “the long-term economic impacts of gender inequality,” which had a single bright shining moment: a statement from Megan Rapinoe.

Megan Rapinoe and her teammates on the US Women’s National Team have been fighting relentlessly for equal pay in their sport, where the men’s team, which has not won a thing in my lifetime, gets paid more to lose than the women’s team is paid to win. This was the cornerstone of her statement which she succinctly fit into a single phrase, “One cannot simply outperform inequality.”

Rapinoe went on to highlight the accomplishments of the USWNT, which provides evidence that the American idea that rewards come to those who work hard and are the best, is a lie. Rapinoe who sleeps on a mountain of trophies and medals made higher by the accomplishments of her fiance Sue Bird, once again threw the US Soccer Federation under the bus to remind fans that the USSF is still in court with its players over issues of pay discrepancy.

But ever the optimist, Rapinoe concluded her statement with the idea that of this could change: “We just have to want it to. So, as always, LFG (let’s fucking go).”