Disclaimer: I’ve loved my experience here and the people and the culture, but this is just something that goes along with it. It’s very rare, but still happens.

Yesterday, our UVM team was supposed to have 2 games: the first against the girls of the Naval base in Viña, the second against the University of Valparaiso.

We got to our first game where the field was located midst the training and living facilities of the Navy men who, as you might imagine, all stayed to watch us play. I ended up scoring the first two of the twelve goals as we claimed our victory 12-0.

After the game, we all boarded the van to take us to our next game in Valparaiso. It was only going to be 20 minutes per half as it was a celebration of an inauguration of the new field they had built, but it was still going to be a serious game for us. The University of Valparaiso was the only team the girls had lost to last semester in a very very tight game. When we arrived, we all rushed to the locker room to listen to the coach’s field assignments and the starters dressed themselves in the university’s white/away jerseys. After the main ceremony, we took the field, warming up with team passing games and a few drills.

After a while, we saw the men warming up. They were supposed to be playing after us, so we supposed they were just warming up early…really early. When we saw the officials, the starters ran to the locker room again to change out of the away jerseys into the majestic, red jerseys; the home jerseys. Then we all gathered to hear the coach’s motivational words once more to get us all ready to take the field to play. All the team gathered in the center of the field to do our grito (cheer) and we took our positions, ready to go…but the Valparaiso team was still huddled talking to the officials. The men were still practicing.

A few moments later the team manager came over to us looking seriously agitated and upset and told us to pack up our stuff; we were leaving.

Turns out that the men’s teams were going to play first. Even though both of the women’s teams were ready and we had the right to play first, they let the men play simply because they preferred to play first. They told us we could wait and play after, but at this point it was already late and we had been offended enough. As we were exiting, the crowd was confused and whistled loudly (which here means something along the lines of “what the heck!”) and even began to chant “Let the girls play!” The mayor of Valparaiso was there, and he did nothing.

So the men got to play, and we left. We weren’t going to wait around for the men to finish their game in order for the women to be able to play; we weren’t going to take that kind of disrespect. They had invited us to go over to their new field and play, when we could have said no but we gathered all of our players and took van to be able to play in honor of their new field. On top of that, we were there warming up and getting motivated for almost an hour beforehand but because the men felt they had the right to play first, they kicked us, the women, out.

This my friends is typical Chilean machismo. Uncommon, but still exists.

Still makes me angry, but there’s nothing that can be done about it now. Chile is making steps towards equality between men and women, but obviously, still needs work. I know the women on my team and I will not be allowing this type of disrespect and little by little we can get diminish the existence ofmachismo in this country.