Should Women be Paid as Much as Men in Tennis?

This article originally appeared on VICE Sports UK.

It all started with an item of clothing.

During a blistering London summer in 1884 two women were playing a match of tennis. Wimbledon, back then a single grass court surrounded by stands large enough for 1,000 spectators, had, for the first time in its history, allowed women to participate in their own Championship. Most of the crowd were locals and minor royals. Some were inevitably grumbling about how tennis – a new fangled sport – was replacing croquet as the club's game of choice.

It was hot, exceptionally so, and the two competitors were dressed not in today's lightweight attire, but dresses. And corsets. They were competing in a best out of three sets and, somewhere at the beginning of the second set, one of the participants fainted. Her opponent received a walkover to the next round.

There are many variations of this story with small alterations to setting and the year – though it is often relayed by many people within the tennis hall of fame, such as Billie Jean King, as the foundation stone to sexual inequality in the game. Women, it was assumed, could not compete across best of five matches during Slams if they couldn't see out a set without keeling over. Hypoxia was never really discussed, despite the fact corsets essentially misshape your entire body, both outside and in.

Women went on, for a further 50 years from 1884, competing in corsets during matches (an item of clothing to blame for over-heating, dehydration and broken ribs). Men never had to play in that sort of clothing. Despite this, it's still assumed that they are incapable of conducting themselves at the intensity of men.

In the world of tennis, people are obsessed with time. The longer the match, the more its perceived value. In 1951, the International Labour Organisation gathered to discuss equality of payment for women. Their mandate was simple, to "ensure the application to all workers of the principle of equal remuneration for men and women workers for work of equal value."

For every Grand Slam, the debate re-emerges – should women be paid less because they don't compete best out of 5? Should men play best out 3? Is the women's game as popular or as competitive as the men's? You will know the ILO mandate now as the idiom "equal pay for equal work". Or, in the words of people who don't like women athletes, "female tennis players don't play best out of five sets so they shouldn't be paid the same as men, who do."

Tennis – especially in the Grand Slams – is seen by some to be unequal. Women, on average, get paid more per game than men. It's probably the only sport in the world where this is the case, and therefore it must be destroyed.

There are a few issues with this, but most pressingly the assumption that work is measured within time. In other words, they focus on the term "equal work" rather than the original phrasing, "work of equal value". This may appear to be squabbling over semantics, but the difference is within the life-stream of women's tennis. Winning a Grand Slam, whether you are a man or a woman, is work of equal value, an achievement mathematically and precisely identical across the gender line. The length of a match meaning the better the play – or bigger is better – is a theory, not a truism.

When Andy Murray crushed Novak Djokovic in straight sets in the 2013 Wimbledon final, he was applauded; when Petra Kvitova did the same a year later to Eugenie Bouchard, it was used as vehicle to deride the women's game. Serena Williams' dominance is a constant breakwater for a debate about the state of women's tennis, too. As if having a potential greatest-of-all-time playing right now means the women's game is in a bad state and they should be punished, financially, for it.

It is a rarely discussed issue that the lower ranked players – those outside the top 75 – often play far more than the top ranked players. The reason being, of course, that tennis is not a salaried job. People have to play to live. In the men's game, the second-tier Challenger circuit offers anywhere from $40,000 for a tournament to $220,000. This is in stark contrast to $400,000 to as much as $6 million for a win on the ATP tour. For the women, second-tier tours offer $10,000 to $100,000, a significant step down.

Some events, such as the Brisbane International played before the Australian Open, only invite the top 30 women's players in the world – meaning that the rest are playing much less prestigious, well funded events in general anonymity to the majority of the sport's fans. They are playing the same amount of matches, but earning far less money. In tennis, time on the court does not equate to great financial prizes: it rewards success, as it should. A champion should earn as much as another champion.

In Grand Slams, and certain Masters 1000 events, such as Miami, the prize money is spread evenly across tiers and gender, so a male player who loses in the Quarter Finals is paid exactly the same amount as a female player who does the same. Again, this is payment based not on time spent on court, but of value progression. It makes sense; it's fair. Set quantity doesn't matter, when it's ability and progression that's being rewarded.

By the logic of those who would see either female Grand Slam champs be paid less than men, for playing less, then it would follow that those who play the most should earn the most. In other words, the ones toiling for their livelihood in small, no-name tournaments throughout the world. During Wimbledon 2015, there are at least 6 other tournaments on-going.

Arguing women should be paid less in Slams logically causes a domino effect that would cause an infinite regression into the sport, where each point is worth an extra £100. It's an unthinking way of spreading sexism. Do we award each champion more money for winning a tighter match, during which they'd inevitably win more games than, say, a 6-0, 6-0, 6-0 win? Of course not.

As the sport of tennis has grown in popularity, it inevitably became corporatized and monetised. This is great for female athletes, with all 3 (yes, only 3) of the world's top-100 paid female athletes being tennis players. Quartz have designed a great series of graphs that shows the equitability of net worth across the top 100 of both sexes. Tennis, due to the Slam's communal decision to offer equal prize money, is by far the most equal of all major sports. And for that it should be applauded, rather than being the focus of an endless debate as to whether it is justified.

It's not at parity yet though. Roger Federer, arguably the greatest men's player of all time, has won 17 Grand Slams in the singles and earned $90million. Serena Williams, arguably the greatest female player of all time, has won 19 Grand Slams in the singles and a further 13 in the doubles, for a total of $69 million. TV deals and the greater interest in the men's game currently (with the top 4/5 being considered some of the finest of all time, including the currently out of sorts Nadal) creates a financial system where the men's game is above the women's. Put simply, more people want to watch Novak Djokovic play Andy Murray than Maria Sharapova play Heather Watson. But it's not set in stone.

From the late '80s up to mid 2000s, women's tennis was arguably in a much better position than the men's game. Martina Navratilova, Steffi Graff, Monica Seles, Martina Hingis, Lindsay Davenport, Serena Williams, Venus Williams, Jennifer Capriati, Justine Henin, Kim Clijsters, Amelie Mauresmo, and Maria Sharapova ensured that each Grand Slam was fiercely contested.

In 2005, the women's game was enjoying a real golden era, with about 15 or so world class athletes competing for the silverware. This, obviously, piqued public interest. 1 million more people watched that year's Wimbledon Women's final than watched the men's.

During the vast majority of the season, across both the ATP and the WTA tour, men and women play the best of three set matches. It is only when Grand Slams occur, operated by the ITF, that men play best of five. The ITF, unrestrained by ATP and WTA regulations, can do whatever it wants. And, historically, what that entailed was accidentally spreading the idea that women – who run marathons, like Carole Wozniacki, and set the world record for the solo navigation around the world – cannot play best of five matches. This, by way of an example, despite the 2014 French Open final between Simona Halep and Maria Sharapova being only fifteen minutes shorter than the battle of Nadal and Djokovic.

The debate around five sets for women is a red herring. Marion Bartoli, the 2013 Wimbledon champion, told the BBC that that she didn't think women could; Stacey Allaster, the WTA Chairwoman, on the other hand, has said the opposite: "Our players have always said that they are willing to play best 3 out of 5 sets." Andy Murray said in 2013 that he would be in favour of women playing best out of 5 in Slams, citing history as his precedent.

Exactly 100 years after that first tournament in 1884, the WTA Finals, the end-of-year tournament designed apparently to punish the best players with a slightly irrelevant extra tournament, began a 14 year experiment of women playing 5 set matches. Guess what? Nobody fainted or died. Matches were completed.

It's a not exactly unexpected revelation that men are the ones most likely to argue that a women should either play more or earn less, because men are used to the opposite occurring. Positive change is threatening.

Arguing about time spent on court subtly turns the conversation away from the real issue. It makes a debate about equality in sport into a debate about quality in sport. A five set match is considered the pinnacle of the sport, but no man has ever competed while wearing an item of clothing that actively prevents you from breathing. Until then, it's up for debate.

During those early tournaments, female players would return to dressing rooms to get out of the corsets and inspect the bruises and sores that had formed on their upper body, before getting back into them to go out and play another round, while the men wore linen shirts and trousers, with nothing but a splinter to worry about.

It's a roundabout debate, and out of everyone's hands except the ITF organisers, who can't adjust the length of women's matches without putting in jeopardy the already packed timetable of every Slam.

Discussion of women's tennis often boils down to two things: it's boring or it's filled with grunts. Often, online comments are filled with sexist vitriol, with the nastiest ones rising to the top. But, on the court, it's actually a happy story. It's the most high profile women's sport in the world and the top athletes earn a lot of money, equitable to men. If you win a Slam then you should be paid the same.

In contrast to this, 52 individual NBA players earn more in a year than every single WNBA player in the world. Maybe it annoys some people that women earn the same as men. But after decades spent playing in corsets, perhaps women players simply deserve a break.