President Joe Biden has made a bold statement reminding the world that “there’s not a single thing a man can do that a woman can’t do as well or better.” In the meantime, his statement came with a side order of “equal pay” chatter for female soccer players – to which one might recall a lawsuit that already happened and showed women players were getting more compensation then their male counterparts.
WATCH President Joe Biden make his comparative statement:
Women’s soccer player Megan Rapinoe, the one known for her pink hair and activist ways, was invited to speak along with President Biden.
She mentioned the following in her statement:
I’m a member of the LGBTQ community with pink hair and where I come from, I could have only dreamed that I would be standing in the position I am today in the White House. Despite all the wins, I am still paid less than men who do the same job that I do. For each trophy, of which there are many, and for each win, for each tie, and for each time that we play, it’s less.
At some point a reporter asked President Biden if he would do something to make women’s soccer player get equal pay. Biden responded saying he would, if he could. Biden’s second bold statement went as follows:
Reporter: ‘Can you order equal pay for the [women’s] soccer team, sir?’
Biden: ‘If I could, it would have been done a long time ago. It would have been done in 2015.’
However, there lies a problem with that because the women’s soccer team had went to court and lost its pay discrimination suit.
A judge found that the women soccer players were already receiving more compensation than male players, as stated on Forbes:
In 2019 they [women’s soccer] filed a federal lawsuit alleging pay discrimination based on their gender.
Last week however, a federal judge dismissed most of their lawsuit. A few claims remain alive such as the allegation that male players get better travel accommodations. But on the key claim that the women are getting paid less than the men, the judge found the opposite: the women are getting higher compensation than the men.
The court found that the female players “received more money than [male] players on both a cumulative and an average per-game basis. Indeed . . . payments to the [female athletes] totaled approximately $24 million and averaged $220,747 per game, whereas payments to the [male players] totaled approximately $18 million and averaged $212,639 per game.”
It appears the reporter who asked the question, Meghan Rapinoe, and President Joe Biden might not be aware of that and it wouldn’t hurt for them to do a little bit of research.
