This from the Wall Street Journal indicates that even a major international trophy sometimes isn’t enough to put women on equal footing (pun perhaps intended) with men:

The Japanese women, considered strong contenders for Olympic gold in London, had to squeeze into economy seats on a 12-hour flight to Europe this week, while members of the less successful men’s soccer team, enjoyed the plush amenities of business class further up the cabin.

“It should have been the other way around,” team captain Homare Sawa, the belle of Japanese soccer, told reporters after arriving in Paris. “Even just in terms of age, we are senior,” joked FIFA’s women’s soccer player of the year.

Apparently this was the doing of the Japanese Football Association, whose “Fifth Principle” of their code of conduct holds them to “Apply all human, intellectual, and material resources accumulated towards the contribution to Asian and global football.”

Material resources does not include fancy seats on an airplane for world champion footballers.