Women's tennis and equal pay

[messyisthenewtidy]

Can I ask what everyone thinks re. the recent furore over women's equal prize money at Wimbledon?

Surely, the fairest solution would be to let women play 5 sets? Or am I missing something fundamental here?

..........................Singles......Doubles (per pair).....Mixed Doubles (per pair)
1st Round............£11,500............£5,250...................£1,300
2nd Round...........£20,125............£9,000....................£2,600
3rd Round............£34,375..........£16,000....................£5,200
4th Round............£68,750.............-.............................-
Quarter Finalist....£137,500..........£31,250..................£10,500
Semi Finalist........£275,000..........£62,500..................£23,000
Runner Up...........£650,000.........£125,000..................£46,000
Champion.........£1,100,000.........£250,000..................£92,000

Prize Money for Wimbledon 2011, male and female got the same.
I'm not sure but I think they still get something just for playing in the first round, even if they don't win.

you'd have to play in a LOT of tournaments to cover the cost of coaching, travel, living etc if you're at the lower end & establishing yourself.

but yes, sponsorship, parental support, sports grants, people being nice to you etc etc.

I've heard many stories of sportswomen struggling to get sponsors who don't insist on bikini shots as part of the deal.

I think women should be paid less because womens matches typically do not last as long as mens and this means that less revenue can be generated through advertising and marketing. As if a womens match lasts 1hr 30min and a mens lasts 2hr 30min then there is more time for advert breaks etc.

They should both do the same number of sets and get the same prize money. How is it relevant that women play women and men play men? Why would you have to have them playing eachother for it to be an equal prize fund. It's just that a person wins wimbledon surely.

Good grief.

aedes you believe that women's prizes should be less than men's prizes because their matches are shorter.

So do you generally think that the person who takes longer to win a competition should have a lesser prize? How is that going to work with things like running races?

It makes me really sad that people actively want to take the situation that has been in places for the last 5 years and change it so that women who win get a lesser prize than men who win.

Logically this will be across the board, I assume, and apply to all competitions.

I thought that people were on the wind-up but now I'm starting to wonder.

I think it should be less because women's matches will generate less commercial revenue for the tournament as a whole and so the prize money distribution should reflect this.

So in your view the point of sport is commercial?

According to Thumbwitch's table (thanks by the way!) if they are looking at unevenness of pay they should first look at doubles vs singles.

How do 2 people playing a match get less than one person playing a match?

You could argue that they are doing half as much work each, but in that case it should be the same per pair as it is for one person playing a singles match.

Or alternatively "prize money" is not pay for work, it is a bonus, and people are doing the "work" (playing the game) for free.

Not for me personally but at professional level it does play some role. Prize money is paid out out of revenue generated by the tournament which comes from sources such broadcast rights and sponsorships, the mens game offer more opportunity to maximise and generate revenue ans so they should be entitled to a greater cut of the revenue as they are generating more of it than the women as a potential 5 sets creates more opportunities.

I'm at some of the views being expressed on this thread.

Wimbledon is many, separate competitions. The women's singles is one of them and the men's singles is the other. These are the highest profile competitions. There are equal prize 'pots' for each. And why shouldn't there be? The women are not competing against the men, so their physical differences have absolutely nothing to do with what money either competition should offer as a prize.

And as for how entertaining we find the games, or how sexually arousing certain players might be. Just how insulting can you possibly be?

Honestly. Use your brains, people!

So for you any sporting event is about money money money.

That is a pretty sad state of affairs.

There was me thinking it was about people striving to be their best, working hard, having a highly competitive nature etc.

Depressing.

I think a lot of people have sport and entertainment mixed up in their heads.

Wimbledon started as a small local competition. People competed because they enjoyed the game and they wanted to win a prize, and be the best.

For the competitors it is still all about being the best, winning the competition, getting a prize. The prize is now a whole bunch of things including cash, as the tournament is popular for people to watch. But the primary point of it is not entertainment. The primary point of it is that it's a competition that people enter because they want to win. Same as any other competition.

Wimbledon was not created as an entertainment based money-spinning exercise, no matter what people might think.

Nor was the olympic games.

Shocking stuff, huh?

I'm with you, SQ.

I mean up and down the country, people are competing in sporting endeavours against each other. Sometimes the prize is a weekend in looe, sometimes the prize is a certificate, sometimes the prize is a place in another competition. And so on, all sorts of prizes.

People don't seem to understand this basic idea. Just because a competition has become popular with spectators, doesn't change what it fundamentally is.

Sport is part of the entertainment business, people watch it to be entertained, do you think people pay big money to go and watch or pay for Sky Sports to not be entertained?
Traditionally sport was participated in for personal honour and to compete but that was in the day when sport was amateur since most sports went professional it is as commercialised as anything else and so the prize money should reflect this.

Oh those poor, poor male tennis players being discriminated against so cruelly.

How dreadful for them. How they must cry themselves to sleep at night over the unfairness of it all.

But aedes don't you see that the reason that women's tennis doesn't get much attention is because it doesn't get much media coverage. I for one would love to see more of women's tennis and am annoyed when I open newspaper to find it relegated to secondary position.

It is a case of the emperors new clothes. People believe that MT is more interesting cos everyone else says it is. Not to mention the long history of prejudice that women's tennis has had to battle against. The crap they had to put with being told they were too delicate or that playing would stop them having children. I mean ffs men's tennis has had a huge helping hand yet no one seems to notice that.

Simon should have thought of that before he opened his big mouth, about the huge privilege that he has to come into a game that is geared towards him whilst Sharapova and Williams have to battle against dumb arsed opinions. I'm on team Sharapova for sure.

In fact, the power-serve and crash-volley style of a lot of men's tennis makes much of it really bloody boring these days.

Women's tennis gets loads of attention.
Especially if the woman playing is young and attractive.
FFS.

eades sport is not "part of the entertainment business"
the fact that some people are happy to pay to watch some events does not mean a. that event is now part of the entertainment business or b. that sports that do not attract much of a following are pointless

I imagine that most sports people would be pretty fucked off to be described as "entertainers".

I think a distinction needs to be drawn between amateur and professional sport, Professional Sport relies on entertaining fans in order for it to remain in existence. If Premier League football didn't entertain people no-one would watch it at the ground or on TV and they would quickly go out of business. Of course winning is the most important aspect of this as if your team/individual loses then it is unlikely that you will have enjoyed it. Amateur sport is played purely for enjoyment and fitness.

In relation to Wimbledon, if the men's tennis event generates more money through tv/sponsors then they should receive more money. Similarly women's tennis generates more than the mens/womens/mixed doubles so individual women players should receive more prize money than the mens/womens/mixed doubles players IMO.

squeaver Actually the crash volley style of men's tennis went out a couple of decades ago with the changes in grass surface at Wimbledon (much slower), the changes in balls and the fact that there are hardly any grass courts left. The US and Australian opens switched to hard surfaces years ago. There are only one or two men in the top 100 who play the serve volley game now. Henman was one of the last and Stepanek who played this afternoon was another rare example. This means the game is much more attritional which is why so few top male players can do the double.

I would like to see women in the slams play five sets just as the men do. It could be accommodated with an earlier morning start and routine playing on the middle Sunday. Women are not fragile butterflies but fit sports people and the fact that they don't is redolent of the "but their wombs might fall out" argument used to deprive women in sport in the way that women were prevented in athletics from running more than 800 metres until a few decades ago. It is insulting.

Depriving them of five sets also means they do not have a chance to stage a comeback even after losing two sets. How many men do we see win in five sets? A lot. Rosul/Nadal last night was a classic example, and who can forget the 2008 Nadal/Federer final (for example)?

It would spur women on to be even fitter and train even harder and then maybe we would see more strength in depth in the women's game and fewer of these rather embarrassing 6:0, 6:1 routs, which, frankly are tedious and it's no wonder that the men's game is (generally) more interesting and more competitive.

I'm sure the older posters among us can remember when first Tuesday at Wimbledon was "ladies day". It is still is called that because that's when the previous champion opens proceedings on Centre Court but it used to be that it was only women's matches that day. And the gates were down, which is why Wimbledon changed it to mix men and women's matches from day one.

This thread is so depressing. Of course pay for men and women in tennis tournaments should be equal. It's awful that people on here are arguing against this basic principle.

The argument that men should get more because they generate more tv/sponsorship money just ignores (and perpetuates) the entirely sexist factors that have contributed to an under-recognition and under-appreciation of women's sport.