How tennis changed and made equal pay a reality
It wasn't all green grass for women tennis players
Last year in Sep 2023, Coco Gauff won the US Open Tennis Championship. She picked up her glistening trophy, held it high and the spectators broke into a thunderous applause. Coco clutched the $3 million prize cheque in one hand, glanced sideways towards one person in the audience. That was Billie Jean King. Coco nodded and mouthed these words - ‘Thank you Billie! If not for you, no woman tennis player would be holding a cheque for such a big sum of money.’
If things had wrong, Coco might have been holding a cheque for no more than $1. What Billie Jean King and eight other women tennis players did in 1970 is a story better than any fairy tale. Tighten your belts and get ready.
A story is right, when you start at the very beginning
Kings, nobles and the rich played tennis as a way to pass time and have fun. For many hundreds of years, tennis remained the sole preserve of nobles and the royalty (just like horse polo). Gradually, this sport became more accessible to people who were ‘not part of the elite rich class’. People from a wider section of society took to playing tennis. Whether rich or not, all tennis players were ‘amateurs’. These ‘amateurs’ played matches in tournaments (e.g. Wimbledon, French Open, US Open and Australian Open) because they enjoyed the sport. They still had to do something else to earn a living (unless of course they were born rich and had a ton of money in the bank already).
Some sensible people got around to thinking ‘Hmm….why not let people who are good at tennis earn a living by playing the game! People who are good at learning the law and arguing in court become lawyers and earn a living from that. People who diagnose and cure diseases become doctors and earn money by practising medicine. So should people who play tennis well, earn by participating in tournaments and winning them.’ Thus, in 1968, the world of tennis saw a shift.
People could now start earning prize money in tennis tournaments and use that as a way to fund their lives. They were no longer ‘amateurs’. The game went ‘open’. People who wanted to play ‘professionally’ also joined the sport. The grand tournaments like Wimbledon and French Open announced big cash prizes for their winners. Tennis players started taking the game seriously and trained hard. Thus started a new era in the world of tennis.
A story is not a good story, if the plot did not have a problem somewhere in the middle
It was a curious thing that in 1968 if a man won a Wimbledon tournament (men’s singles category), he would be paid $2000 but if a woman won the tournament (women’s singles category), she would be paid $750. In most tournaments, women players would earn significantly lesser than that of the men. Making things worse, there were fewer tennis tournaments for women in a year, while the men had plenty of them going around. This meant that men had more opportunities to earn a lot more money, while the women had to make-do with just 5-8 such opportunities in a year.
….and the women refused to be de-valued
Almost all women tennis players were downright unhappy. But few felt that there was anything that they could do. There was an exception - a group of nine women tennis players.
This group decided to strike out on their own. They approached Gladys Heldman - the editor of a very famous tennis magazine, for support. Gladys was a great champion of female tennis players (her daughter was also a leading player at that time). Gladys also sported excellent business sense. She suggested that they set up their own tournament, and that she would help them raise sponsorship money from businesses. She also used her business contacts to popularise ‘women tennis’ amongst the audience. Thus was born the the Virginia Slims Circuit - the new tournament helmed by these nine women. To begin with, these nine players signed a contract to earn $1 with this new circuit.
There was no guarantee that they would be able to raise any ticket earnings or company sponsors. Hence the decision to start with $1 to play for this tournament. The nine players relied entirely on their ability to promote the event, raise money and thus pay themselves a bigger prize money. Unlike the men, they could not rely on tournament organisers (like Wimbledon or US Open) to do all the publicity. The men could focus on the game to earn money, while the women had to do both - train hard and promote their new tournament, to earn their living.
The big tennis tournaments in the US, Europe and Australia reacted the way big bullies do. They threatened to expel all of these nine players and never allow them to play in the big leagues and the Grand Slams. Billie Jean King (who was one of these nine protesting players) was a world-class player and had won the Wimbledon championship the previous year. Julie Heldman (another one of these nine) had won the Italian Open championships. These nine women players stood to lose a lot, if they were banned. But they decided to stand their ground.
Billie Jean King said in a recent interview, ‘We decided that we would give up our entire careers, if it meant that future generations would have a better world to live in.’
The Virginia Slims Circuit became a big hit. Spectators flocked to watch these world-class players battle it out. The big tournaments (like the US open) watched them with a nervous eye, but were still not sure if they could expel the nine women from their tournament.
The words that helped the movement gain steam
In 1973, a man was to utter some words that would change the destiny of women’s tennis.
One of the world’s top men tennis players Bobby Riggs declared “Women belong to our homes and in our kitchens. They do not belong in any sporting tournaments. They play only 25% as well as the men and so should not expect to earn more than 25% of what the men earn." He threw a challenge to Billie Jean King to play a match against him. The winner would earn $100,000.
Billie Jean King accepted the challenge. This match was billed ‘Battle of the Sexes’. More than 30,000 spectators bought tickets to watch this match and it was set to be streamed live on television (at that time, it was watched by more than 50 million people - making it the MOST viewed match in sports history).
Billie Jean King defeated Bobby Riggs. They played three sets. She beat him in every single one of the sets. The score was 6–4, 6–3, 6–3. There was a thunderous uproar in the stands as the audience cheered for King for a very long time. That win was one of the greatest events in women’s tennis history. It set in motion many changes in women’s tennis.
Equal pay for men and women! Finally!
While the nine tennis players continued to popularise women’s tennis and their Virginia Slims Circuit was gaining wider acceptance, the traditional tennis tournaments did not change their ways. They still paid men many times more than the women. For e.g. in 1972, Billie Jean King won the women’s title in the US open. She was paid $10,000. Ilie Nastase, who had won the men’s title in the US Open, was paid $25,000 that year.
King was beginning to get annoyed. In 1973, she declared that she would boycott the US Open that year, if the men and women did not receive the same prize money. The organisers of US Open came around to their senses (or buckled under pressure). They equalised the prize money for both men and women at $25,000.
Not everyone followed suit
Equalising pay in the US Open was the first of many victories. Billie Jean King spearheaded this change. But it took nearly 30 more years before the next big tournament (Australian Open) equalised pay in 2001. King had retired from tennis by then. Younger tennis players carried this torch forward. Venus Williams, along with other women tennis players, continued to demand equal pay. In 2007, Wimbledon and French Open equalised pay. After more than 35 years of the famous ‘Battle of the Sexes’, where Billie Jean King established that women players were no weaklings, it took many many more women to push the envelope forward.
Tennis is the only major sport in the world today, where women and men get equal prize money. For that, we have these Original Nine to thank. These were the women who dared to think differently and take a huge risk so future generations would benefit.
Rosie Casals, Valerie Ziegenfuss, Kerry Melville Reid, Judy Dalton, Billie Jean King, Peaches Bartkowicz, Kristy Pigeon, Nancy Richey and Julie Heldman are the Original Nine.
This story is to celebrate ‘Equal Pay Day’, celebrated on 6-March, every year.
Hope you had fun reading this week’s story. I had a a lot of fun researching this story. If you liked today’s story, please do click that little ‘Like’ button. Also, share this story with your friends, to spread a little joy.
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If you put all the bacteria in the world on the one side of a see-saw and all the human beings in the world on the other side of the see-saw, which side would go down?
Curious to know the answer? Listen to this week’s podcast. It’s based on a recent science discovery published in the ‘Scientific American’.
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