Megan Rapinoe lambasts NBA star Draymond Green for ‘showing his whole a**’ over gender pay gap
(Photo by Theo Wargo/Getty Images for Women In Sports Foundation/Michael Reaves/Getty Images)
Megan Rapinoe has fired back at NBA player Draymond Green, saying he should better educate himself over gender pay equality.
Rapinoe said Green “just kind of showed his whole a**” when he suggested female athletes were partially responsible for pay inequality by not doing more to promote their sports.
Green, the Golden State Warriors power forward, wrote in a series of tweets that women athletes’ calls for equal pay were “falling on deaf ears” because women “keep saying pay me more with no way to drive the revenue”.
He doubled down in a subsequent interview where he said he was “really tired” of hearing complaints about equal pay.CBS Sports reported Green said female athletes are “doing themselves a disservice by just complaining” because they’re “not laying out the steps that they can take to change that”.
“It’s coming off as a complaint because the people that can change it are just going to continue to say: ‘Well, the revenue isn’t there. So if you don’t bring in the revenue, we can’t up your pay’,” Green said.
Megan Rapinoe, who had already pushed back against Green’s initial thread on Twitter, weighed in again on Green’s statements during a Team USA media event on Wednesday (7 April). She told reporters: “It’s really unfortunate that in the position he’s in, having all the resources that he has and the ability to have a much more educated opinion, that he just hasn’t.”
Rapinoe added the fight for equality could only be achieved by broad support from across society. She explained: “We know this about all social movements, and all people who are marginalised, whether by race or gender, religion – it is not just their job to be fighting oppression.
“We need everyone else as well. So to have someone who does know what it’s like to be oppressed to heap that back on female players is just really disappointing.”
Megan Rapinoe said she knows “a lot of amazing people in the Warriors organisation” who she was sure would be “very happy to sit down” with Draymond Green. She continued: “Hopefully that education comes because it was really disappointing.
“From someone with such a big platform that’s just not acceptable.”
Rapinoe and her fellow USA teammates have been figureheads in the fight for equal pay in all its forms. Rapinoe even took on the issue in testimony before Congress. She spoke at a hearing to “examine the long-term economic impacts of gender inequality”.
Rapinoe argued: “One cannot simply outperform inequality, or be excellent enough to escape discrimination of any kind.”
