Equal Pay

I was planning on making this part of the previous post, but it made it too long and wordy. 

One of Rapinoe's crusades is equal pay. For the last few years she has been up on her soapbox, preaching to the world that women deserve equal pay. And her focus has been on the pay disparity between the US Women's team and the US Men's team. While I can't remember the exact numbers, there is a pretty significant difference. And she also compares, justifiably, the difference in success. The USWNT has won multiple World Cups and have medaled in Olympic competition. The men, not so much. This year, the USWNT, along with China and Brazil, are favored to win it all in Tokyo. The USMNT couldn't even qualify. These are her (and others) arguments for equal pay. 

USWNT Flag Issue

I realize this is a bit of old-ish news, but I stewed on it for a little while. Recently, while playing Mexico, some members the USWNT looked to have turned their backs on the US flag. The official Twitter account for the US teams has denied this, saying the players were looking at a flag in a different part of the stadium. Never mind that the women who were not facing the flag that is at the end of the stadium are the same players who have done this time after time. Since I don't have a Twitter account, I can't post those kinds of things here. This is the tweet: From U.S. Soccer Comms, "To be clear, no one turned their back on WWII Veteran Pete DuPre during tonight's anthem.  Some USWNT players were simply looking at the flag pole in one end of the stadium. The players all love Pete, thanked him individually after the game and signed a ball for him." NOTE the tweet didn't say turn their backs on the flag. Based on what I've been able to gather, no one was accusing the players for turning their backs on Mr. DuPre, but not facing the US flag. If one watches the video, you can clearly see that most of the women who were not facing towards Mr. DuPre had their hands over their hearts while facing the flag at the end of the stadium. Those facing forward, not a single one had their hand covering their heart. And as I pointed out earlier, it's the same cast of characters.