“I don’t know why it’s not equal right now,” Paula Badosa of Spain said of the prize money on the women’s and men’s tours.Credit…Isabel Infantes/Reuters
There IS a continuing ‘less pay’ standard for women across the sports world….
The best tennis players in the world descend this week on Rome, where men and women will play in the same best-of-three-sets format, on the same courts and in the same tournament, which sells one same-price ticket for both men’s matches and women’s matches.
There is one massive difference between the two competitions, however: Men will compete for $8.5 million while the women will compete for $3.9 million.
The huge pay discrepancy comes after two months of tennis that included three similarly significant tournaments in California, Florida and Madrid that featured men and women competing for the same amount of prize money. Men and women also get paid the same at the four Grand Slam tournaments, where men play best of five sets and the women play best of three.
But not in Rome at the Italian Open. And not yet in the Cincinnati suburbs at the Western & Southern Open. Or in Canada, at the National Bank Open, where the men and women alternate between Toronto and Montreal each year….