This week the All England Club announced that men and women would be awarded equal prize money for the first time in its history. Back in 1968 — the first year the tennis championships were open to professionals — Billie Jean King was awarded £750 compared to Rod Laver’s £2000, a whopping difference of 62.5 percent! By 2006 the difference between the prize money awarded to the men’s and women’s champions had been whittled down to just under 5 percent, but still the discrimination was flagrant: Men were awarded more for winning the same tournament.
Of the four Grand Slam tournaments, the US Open has long championed equality, 34 years to be precise. The Australian open came into line in 2000 and the French, well the French are not quite there yet, but keep your ears open, the Federation Francaise de Tennis is bound to follow suit any day now.
The difference between men and women’s prize money has been a point of contention for years. The arguments for maintaining the differential are not without merit, or so I thought for years. When I first went to Wimbledon as a teenager, it was the men I wanted to watch. Women’s tennis did not have the same excitement factor. It was slower, it was less thrilling, it plain lacked muscle. The idea that women were paid less for playing seemed rather natural. They weren’t as good at it and they also played fewer sets. The only excitement was the rivalry between Chris Evert and Martina Navratilova; the other players we thought of as barely more than supporting characters. Year on year we cheered on Evert — feminine, graceful and the exact anti-thesis of Narvatilova’s aggressive serve and volley game — and jeered at Navratilova. But Navratilova not only kept on winning but continued to grow stronger and more powerful. Over the years the jeering stopped and she became a much-loved champion, though I never warmed to her game.
The last time I went to a Wimbledon final was in the same year that Navratilova played her last singles final. She lost to Conchita Martinez. I watched it on television. I recall we were gripped. It had drama, it had emotion and there was tennis to watch. The following day I took my seat on center court for the men’s final: A duel between Pete Sampras and Ivan Ivanisevic. Blink and you missed it. The ball moved so fast it was hardly ever in play. Ivanisevic served 25 aces. Pistol Pete played like a superb tennis machine. Once you got past the open mouth wonderment that tennis this fast was technically possible, you fell into a trance-like boredom akin to watching an interminable line of F-16s taking off.
The following day the papers were full of doom and gloom. Tennis was in crisis. Some suggested changing the rules to exclude second serves, others to make the balls slower. The debate went on for a few years and then disappeared as a new generation of tennis players came on the scene. Tennis became exciting again and some of the most exciting players were not only African-Americans, but sisters! Women’s tennis did what men’s tennis had been failing to do: It generated drama and was compelling to watch. Whether it was the beauty of Anna Kournikova’s physique or the power and guts of the Williams sisters, interest in women’s tennis went sky high and with it the lucrative endorsements that underpins the tennis industry.
Market forces did what years of feminist campaigning had failed to do. The All England Club found itself faced not only with the anger of women tennis players, but also attacked by politicians and commercial sponsors. They bit the bullet and took a decision they should have taken years ago.
Many still prefer to watch men’s tennis. Men’s finals invariably get bigger television audiences. And I can understand it. Ask me which of last year’s finals I would rather have watched and I would have picked Roger Federer over Amelie Mauresmo in an instant. But had you asked me the same question ten years earlier, I would have just as quickly opted to watch the wonderful Steffi Graf win her last Wimbledon tournament.
More viewers can translate into more advertising revenue but the issue here is not one of commercial interest but of principle. The All England Club should set an example and state unequivocally that men and women have an equal place in tennis. Equal does not mean they are the same; it does not negate the existence of differences between men and women’s tennis.
Men are physically stronger. They play faster and have bigger serves. They play more games — though curiously, their matches are often on a par with women’s matches in terms of length. The two games are different but they have equal value and that is the message this decision sends out. Substitute the word gender for the word game and you understand why this decision has so much symbolic importance.
