To be crowned champion of the Cincinnati Masters, tennis players must win the qualifying round before facing and beating five heavyweight rivals in three-set matches each. Behind this, years of training, exercise routines, diets, psychological preparation, medical check-ups, pressure and travel are the only path to glory. This Tuesday, Italian Jannik Sinner and Belarusian Aryna Sabalenka were crowned champions in the men’s and women’s categories. Although the preparation and the feat are comparable, the distribution of prizes is not. Sinner received 943,774 euros (1,049,460 dollars), while Sabalenka received 451,423 euros (501,975 dollars). This disparity was repeated in the doubles category, where they received 289,572 euros, while they received 129,138.
Invisible barriers, conciliation or glass ceiling are concepts popularised in the race for equality, applicable to female administrators, doctors or sportswomen alike. Although tennis is one of the disciplines that has made the greatest efforts to equalise the prize money in women’s tournaments with those in men’s, at least in major competitions, cases frequently emerge in which women’s activity is less valued than that of men. In Cincinnati, which this year reached a record figure of 6,111,208 euros in prize money, the money allocated to reward the male finalists amounts to 1,454,283 euros, compared to the 454,729 euros that were distributed among the female finalists. The tournament ended on Tuesday with scenes that do not seem to be from this time. For example, the men’s runner-up received $71,000 more than the women’s champion, while the women’s doubles runners-up received $100,000 less than the men’s runners-up.
A comparison between the income of male and female tennis players conducted by Adelphi University in New York concluded in 2022 that the top 100 male tennis players enjoy an average remuneration of 1,429,613 euros per year. Women: 934,894.
The path towards equality in the world of tennis has advanced timidly, but thanks to the efforts of women who have renounced conformity. The first competition to equalise pay was the US Open in 1973, after Billie Jean King threatened to boycott the tournament that year after receiving $10,000 for her victory in the previous edition, compared to the $25,000 received by the Romanian Ilie Nastase. “It wasn’t about money, it was about the message,” King would remember 50 years after the event.
Almost three decades had to pass since the American milestone for the Australian Open to decide to equalise prize money for both genders in 2001. Roland Garros did so in 2006 and Wimbledon in 2007, driven by the claims of Venus Williams, who celebrated that the fourth (and last) Grand Slam would ride the wave of gender equality: “I don’t think any woman should worry about whether she is paid equally. I am very happy that no woman has to worry about that anymore and that we can just stick to playing tennis.” At the Masters 1000 in Madrid, Indian Wells and Miami the prize money is identical for men and women. On the other hand, the gap increases at the lower calibre Masters, the WTA 500, 250 or 125.
The Women’s Tennis Association (WTA) unveiled a decade-long program in 2023 to reduce the gap between men and women. The plan includes a calendar with seven Masters 1000 events by 2027 in which women will receive identical prize money to men, as well as three more one-week events that will have the same prize money by 2033. In relation to the 500, it aims to equalize prize money in combined events by 2027 and for non-combined events by 2033; and in the 250, the women’s governing body aims for it to rise by 34% in the next decade. The fight for gender equality in tennis is currently at a decisive set point., although it is far from being a game. While the most visible tournaments have already adapted their remuneration system, some secondary competitions or tournaments maintain a status quo which privileges men. But female tennis players seem determined to change the rules of the game. They want to break the glass ceiling… even if it means hitting balls.
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