Footballer Megan Rapinoe brings the battle for equal pay to Washington

American women's football star Megan Rapinoe testified Wednesday March 24, before Congress and then at the White House, on pay inequalities between men and women, calling for action without delay to bridge the still glaring differences at all income levels.

Read also: Equal pay: what companies are preparing for women

"I was devalued because I am a woman,"

said the player after meeting President Joe Biden, an

"ally"

with whom she displayed her complicity.

“It's really fantastic to be here,”

she said again.

"This presidency is obviously much more welcoming than the previous one,"

added with a big smile the one who had promised that she would not go to the

"p ... of the White House"

when Donald Trump was the tenant.

"It is about justice, it is about being faithful to our values"

, stressed for his part Joe Biden.

"Thank you because you are an example."

Twice world champion with the United States, the striker claims with the entire women's football team to be paid as much as their male counterparts, much better paid despite inferior sporting results.

The

"day of equal pay"

marks the extra time it takes to catch American wages pocketed by their male colleagues the previous year: nearly three months.

Read also: Equal pay in Europe: the good students are not always those we think

In 2019, the international players attacked their federation to obtain parity, without success so far.

"It is simply unacceptable that we are still fighting for equal pay,"

said the 35-year-old footballer before a parliamentary committee of the House of Representatives.

“If it happens to us, if it happens to me, when we're in the spotlight all the time, of course it happens”

to all women, she continued.

For every dollar earned by an American man, a woman earns 82 cents, explained the Democratic chair of this parliamentary committee, Carolyn Maloney.

And the differences widen even more steeply for African American women (60 cents) and Hispanic women (55 cents).

The situation is repeating itself

"for virtually all the jobs on which we have data,"

said Nicole Mason, president of the "Institute for Women's Policy Research" center, which fights for economic parity.

Read also: She obtains 161,000 euros at the industrial tribunal for being paid less than a male colleague

This does not come from "

the individual choices of women"

but

"from the systematic under-evaluation of the talent, the capacities and of what women bring to the world of work"

, she insisted.

"If we do nothing, women will not achieve economic parity with men before 2059. And for women of color, it will take more than a century,"

she said.

“But we don't have to wait,”

Megan Rapinoe said.

"We can change that right now, you just have to have the will."

However, Congress should be slow to act, amid deep divisions between Republicans and Democrats.

Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi on Thursday promised that a new text to

"strengthen and modernize"

the 1963 equal pay law would be passed in the lower house in April.

Despite their very narrow majority, the Democrats will probably not have enough votes to then move the examination of this text towards a vote in the Senate.

Read also: The 3 figures of pay inequality between men and women

The arguments of House Republicans against this text varied during the hearing.

For the elected Nancy Mace, the first woman to graduate from The Citadel military school, the salary differences are not explained by

"generalized discrimination"

but by the fact that

"women in general are ready to exchange a higher salary. against more flexibility ”

.

“We are talking about the free market and freedom,”

said fellow Republican Pat Fallon, wondering why, if such differences existed, companies didn't employ only women.

"It does not work like that"

, replied Nicole Mason, stressing that there was

"not a sector dominated by women where they earn more than men"

.

While awaiting progress by parliamentarians, Joe Biden's vast recovery plan, adopted in March in Congress, particularly targets women. Because if the inequalities were already deep, the pandemic has further accentuated the differences. With devastating effects, Nancy Pelosi lamented in a statement:

“Millions of women who have lost their jobs and more than two million who have been forced to simply leave the labor market, including more than a million mothers, lack of affordable access to child care. ”