Wimbledon Equal Pay?
by Carey Roberts

We have it on the authority of Hillary Clinton that women playing at the Wimbledon tournament will finally receive their due this year: “Wimbledon agreed to pay their women tennis champions the same amount of prize money as their male champions. It only took 123 years for them to do the right thing,” Mrs. Clinton recently exulted. [www.hillaryclinton.com/video/13.aspx]

Hillary has long been an outspoken advocate of equal pay for equal work. So does this news from the All England Lawn Tennis and Croquet Club represent a breakthrough for the cause of female equality?

This year the winner of the men’s and women’s singles competitions will each cart home close to $1.4 million in prize money. But one thing hasn’t changed – the number of sets needed to win. Men will play best of five sets, while women only play best of three.

For years the Women’s Tennis Association has been trying to bring women’s earnings on a par with men’s. But in all that time they never proposed to increase the women’s matches to five sets. That offer would have settled the dispute years ago, and would have saved Maria Sharapova the need to threaten a bra-burning.

The truth is, women’s tennis is beset by a volley of woes that include lack of star power, overcrowded schedules, non-stop injuries, faltering ticket sales, and limp TV advertising.

The problem became painfully obvious during last year’s Australian Open. First Amelie Mauresmo of France, who plays bare-midriff style, was matched against Michaella Krajicek. But Krajicek succumbed to heat exhaustion and Mauresmo won by default.

In the semi-finals she was paired against Kim Clijsters of Belgium. In the third set Clijsters was hobbled by an ankle injury. Another win by default.

In the finals, Mauresmo played Justine Henin of France. But then Henin come down with a tummy ache. Default win number three.

At that rate, any grandma wearing pink tennis shoes could have won the Australian Open.

Things did not get better at the earlier French Open.

Remember grass-court phenoms Venus and Serena Williams? First Venus bowed out in the third round. And then Serena lost to Justine Henin in the quarterfinals, calling her own play “hideous” and “horrendous.” Critics say their dabbling in acting and fashion has caused their careers to nose-dive. [www.tennis-x.com/xblog/2006-10-10/97.php]

With Serena Williams out of the picture, Henin went on to play Ana Ivanovic, mauling her in two sets by an embarrassing 6-1, 6-2 score. The match lasted all of one hour. Well, maybe Ana’s sex appeal will make up for her lack of athletic prowess.

In contrast, Rafael Nada and Roger Federer slugged it out for over three hours in the men’s final. Nada finally prevailed through four high-powered, tension-filled sets.

In a sport heavily dependent on television revenues, a three-hour match brings in far more advertising money than a one-hour contest. Despite that fact, Rafael Nada was paid the same as Justine Henin, each of them raking in one million euros.

None of this comes as news to die-hard tennis fans. Given the choice between a one-hour bunny match with a lop-sided outcome versus a three-hour game that hangs on every cannonball serve and strategic backhand, most fans opt to see the men.

So aficionados who wanted to see the quarter finals at Wimbledon ponied up $3,590 to see the men, compared to only $1,590 to see the women. Even at twice the price, the men’s tickets sold out sooner.

Sports columnist Alan Mascarenhas has concluded that by almost all criteria, “women’s tennis is an inferior product.” So if the ladies are bringing in far less revenue but taking home just as much money as the guys, where is their money coming from?

You guessed it -- out of the men’s pockets.

So next time you see Hillary climb on to her equal-pay-for-equal-work soapbox, let’s ask her this question: “Does three equal five?”

Carey Roberts is a staff writer for the New Media Alliance, Inc. The New Media Alliance is a non-profit (501c3) national coalition of writers, journalists and grass-roots media outlets.