Ladies’s Historical past Month is a chance to rejoice the achievements and contributions of ladies who’ve needed to navigate a men-dominated international the place systemic obstacles and social pressures persist within the boardroom, in the school room, and at the box. And a large a part of this dialog in 2024 is the combat for pay fairness.
Throughout the international of sports activities — one of the crucial largest arenas the place the pay inequity dialog is enjoying out — girls tennis gamers were leaders. In 1973, Billie Jean King fought valiantly for equivalent prize cash for the ladies’s and males’s attracts, and thru her efforts, america Open become the primary primary match to supply equivalent prize cash. Many years later, different primary tournaments adopted go well with.
However despite the fact that 9 of the 10 highest-paid skilled girls’s athletes are tennis gamers, a pay hole persists. As Sportico reviews, the discrepancy lies in endorsement offers, which range between particular person gamers, in addition to the truth that lower-level tournaments do not essentially make sure the similar prize cash for men and women. In a 2023 interview, tennis famous person Jessica Pegula defined it like this: “Ladies’s tennis is a large recreation for the highest-paid feminine athlete, however on the identical time, the pay hole continues to be very giant. And we at all times speak about how it is equivalent at slams, however the ones are 4 tournaments a 12 months. It isn’t equivalent at numerous the opposite tournaments.”
“[W]e have each a possibility and duty to hold this historical past ahead.”
The dialogue round pay fairness has endured at this week’s BNP Paribas Open, with tennis gamers and execs within the trade weighing in at the dialog. At a panel on Global Ladies’s Day, Caitlin Thompson, the founder and CEO of Racquet and a former faculty tennis participant, instructed PS, “Ladies’s tennis has been at the proper facet of historical past relating to gender equality, even if it did not know that it was once. The game has been a pace-setter, and we’ve got each a possibility and duty to hold this historical past ahead.”
For American emerging tennis famous person Emma Navarro, attaining pay fairness is a very powerful to the way forward for the game. “I’d say that the best problem that lies forward for the way forward for girls’s tennis could be pay fairness,” she instructed PS. “Ladies’s and males’s tennis are wonderful in their very own tactics, so simply appreciating girls and the way we play the sport is necessary.” Navarro has complicated to the spherical of 16 of the BNP Paribas Open and can face Aryna Sabalenka on March 13.
This dialog additionally extends to tennis’s fan base; the subject frequently comes up on the preferred tennis fanatic podcast “Bruthas on Tennis,” for instance. In keeping with cohost Ok. Bryce Everett, pay fairness is so necessary as a result of girls tennis gamers have traditionally been such leaders for the sports activities international at massive.
“Ladies’s tennis gamers have long past directly to turn into international leaders outdoor of the context of tennis, they’ve transcended the game of tennis in addition to the visibility of the dialog surrounding equivalent pay,” Everett instructed PS on the BNP Paribas Open. “The tenacity that ladies within the recreation have had has a world affect.”
And the game is most effective gaining popularity. In 2023, women’ tennis skyrocketed in america, with over 190,000 women enjoying highschool tennis. Tennis additionally has the second-highest US viewership amongst girls’s sports activities. The 2023 US Open girls’s ultimate, the place Coco Gauff received her first primary name by way of defeating Sabalenka, garnered essentially the most viewership of any girls’s ultimate ever, and greater than america Open males’s ultimate, by which Novak Djokovic, then and nonetheless the arena No. 1 at the males’s facet, made historical past by way of defeating Daniil Medvedev.
As an extension of tennis, pickleball has additionally emerged as an very popular recreation, and younger girls are discovering nice luck in it. Anna Leigh Waters is the arena’s No. 1 pickleball participant, and he or she’s most effective 17. A part of her luck lies in the truth that pickleball seeks to raise women and men gamers similarly.
“We pull our personal weight, and in our recreation, the match prize is identical for women and men, so we are trendsetting for different sports activities,” she shared in a panel dialogue on the BNP Paribas Open. “Ladies’s sports activities are one thing that individuals like to look at, they see that the ladies can hit laborious, or as laborious as the lads. As the game will get older, I’m hoping we will proceed in this trail.”
However as tennis stars have proven, pay fairness is going past simply match cash and extends to logo offers, endorsements, and the visual advertising of its girls. For the reason that the game has been steeped in exclusivity, custom, and ritual, Thompson has a really perfect thought-starter for the trade to imagine: “How are we now not replicating constructions that did not paintings the primary time? How can I be ensuring the door is open at the back of me, and that the headwinds that a few of us confronted don’t seem to be the similar ones the ones coming subsequent have to stand?”
Ralinda Watts is an writer, range skilled, advisor, practitioner, speaker, and confirmed idea chief who works on the intersection of race, identification, tradition, and justice. She has contributed to a large number of publications, similar to POPSUGAR, CBS Media, Medium, Yahoo Way of life, and the Los Angeles Instances.