U.S. soccer star Megan Rapinoe, who famously said she wouldn’t visit the Trump White House, attended an event marking Equal Pay Day on Wednesday with President Biden and other members of the U.S. Women’s National Team (USWNT).
Equal Pay Day marks the date each year to which women must work to make the same pay that men made the year before.
Rapinoe said that despite the success she has achieved with the USWNT, she has been devalued because of her gender.
“I’ve been devalued, I’ve been disrespected and dismissed because I am a woman. And I’ve been told that I don’t deserve any more than less, because I am a woman,” Rapinoe said.
In June 2019, Rapinoe said that if USWNT won the World Cup, which they went on to do, she would not visit the White House, setting off a feud between the soccer captain and former President Trump.
On Wednesday, during a spontaneous visit to the press briefing room, Rapinoe said it was “amazing” to be at the White House, and took a jab at the previous administration.
“It’s really amazing, I think both of us feel honored to even be invited, and continue the fight that we’ve had for a long time,” she said, later adding that it is “much more welcoming administration, obviously, so that’s also nice.”
Biden pledged to fight to end the gender pay gap, urging Congress to pass the Paycheck Fairness Act, which the House passed nearly two years ago but which was not advanced in the Senate.
He said the legislation will remove loopholes that allow employers to justify gender pay disparities, help hold employers accountable for systemic pay discrimination and help “level the playing field” for women and people of color by making it easier for workers to challenge the disparities as a group.
Biden said that the pay gap “undermines financial security for women and families,” adding that the recently passed $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan is designed to address this challenge.
“To come out of this crisis, and build back better, we need to erase the gender pay gap by ensuring that women have access to good pay jobs,” he said.
Biden reflected on the disproportionate effect the coronavirus pandemic has had on women in the workforce. He said more than 2 million women dropped out of the workforce since the pandemic began, marking the lowest percent of female participation in the labor force in more than 30 years.
First lady Jill Biden also spoke about her own experience as a young educator in 1975, when she found out that she was earning less than a male teacher hired at the same time to do similar work.
“Equal work deserves equal pay no matter who does it,” the first lady said. “I don’t want my granddaughters to have to fight this same battle.”
Vice President Harris also marked Equal Pay Day at a separate White House event earlier Wednesday with administration economic advisers and leaders of various advocacy groups. She spoke of a connection between race and gender and pay equity, and said it was important for leaders to demand transparency to expose inequities.
“We should require the system itself to be transparent and display and share for everyone how they are paying their workforce and whether there is parity and equity in the way that it is being done. And so for that reason, we have to hold employers accountable. We have to hold corporations accountable,” Harris said.