US women football players score big win for equal pay

Sarah and Martin.

What a week for girl power in the football world!

No I'm not talking about my own sporting glory (there is none to speak of) but rather the massive win for the US women's football team.

For years they have been paid much less than their male counterparts, even though they outperform them time after time.

When the women's team won the World Cup last year, 25 million people in the USA tuned in to watch the match. The women far outrank the men in terms of profit and yet, female players who made the World Cup roster in 2015 were paid $15,000 while their male counterparts will each receive $75,000 for their 2018 World Cup. How is this fair?

It's not, and after filing a complaint the US Senate unanimously approved a non-binding resolution calling on the US Soccer Federation to "immediately end gender pay inequity and to treat all athletes with the respect and dignity those athletes deserve." Fantastic news!

Not so great was my attempt to show that women can park just as well as men after news that Chinese car park managers have introduced extra-wide parking spaces for women.

They've painted them pink (because if something is pink it's clearly just for girls) and made them one-and-a-half times the size of a normal space because "women have difficulty parking in reverse."

Outrageous. So, full of confidence I took my testosterone touting counterpart to Park Island with the aim of proving those Chinese car park managers wrong.

We set ourselves a course and the challenge was to complete the path in reverse and then back into a car park as quickly as possible.

I nailed it on the speed front but, apparently, parking outside the white lines with the rear of your car a good metre and a half from the curb is not demonstrative of good parking skills. Martin was slower, but far more accurate. Ho hum.

I beat him in a paper plane challenge last week so I'll just hang on to that glory for a bit longer. And pink is my favourite colour so maybe those car parks wouldn't be so bad after all ...