The American national soccer team and the star for the national women’s soccer league, Megan Rapinoe, did not appreciate the comments of the Golden State Warriors, Draymond Green, about the wage difference between men’s and women’s sports.
Green wrote in a series of tweets on March 27 that until women’s sports leagues generate more revenue, pay will not increase in a meaningful way. He argued that female athletes should push larger enterprises that claim to support women’s sports to actively invest in growing women’s sports leagues.
A few days later, Green added that he “really tired of seeing them complain about the lack of payment because they are doing themselves a disservice by just complaining,” saying that female athletes “do not take steps they can take to change it.”
Rapinoe, an outspoken advocate of equal pay who plays at the OL Reign in the NWSL, struck back during a Zoom call with reporters ahead of the Tokyo Olympics.
‘It’s really unfortunate, in the position [Green’s] in, with all the resources he has and the ability to have a much more trained opinion, which he just does not have, “Rapinoe said.
According to Rapinoe, the steps Green has prescribed have already been taken, but to no avail.
“It’s frustrating, it’s the take you have,” she said. ‘Of course you showed your whole ass by not even understanding what we’re all talking about all the time – WNBA players and us in the national team … You don’ t think we asked for more money? I mean, what are we screaming about? Nonstop!
“We get stupid for ourselves, to be honest. And then two or three days later it’s really frustrating to double it. We know it all, about all the social movements and all the people being marginalized, whether it’s by race or gender, religion, sexuality, whatever it is, it’s not just their job to be oppressors, we need all the other people too. To have someone who does know what it’s like to be oppressed, it is very disappointing to pick it up in many ways on female players, or people who practice women’s sports. ‘