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Tuesday, April 24, 2007
Should women tennis players get as much as the men?
No, not necessarily.
Those who support equal pay for equal work would say that it’s obvious that they should. Just because one group has different genitalia from the other group doesn’t mean they should be compensated differently. However, compensation is tied-in to revenue. If you can generate more revenue than someone else, regarless of gender, you get paid more. We wouldn’t presume that WNBA players should get paid as much as NBA players. Why do the same in tennis?
Because in tennis, the women and men play in the same tournaments, so it seems hard to determine who is really generating the revenue. But, with the Canadian Open, we have something interesting: the men and women play in alternating venues each year, in Toronto and Montreal. This year, the men are in Montreal and the women are in Toronto. The total purse for the men is 2.2 million$. The total purse for the women is 1.34 million$. It seems to me that regardless of how many sets per match, how many rounds, the gender, etc, it all comes down to generating revenue. And the men are generating around 62% of the revenue.
So, what Wimbledon is doing is simply not right. Furthermore, I would imagine that the talent distribution among women is much wider than for men. So, even if for each tournament the men get 62% of the purse, it’s still likely that the top 5 earners in each sport might earn the same when looking at it over a series of tournaments (though this example is less clear with Roger Federer around). I imagine that Henin-Hardenne, Sharapova, Mauresmo, and Clijsters are in the final 8 in most tournaments they play in. I don’t think it’s nearly the case for the men (Federer excepted), like Nadal, Roddick and Davydenko. This would mean that because the men are less likely to finish in the big money, they get a smaller portion of a bigger pie compared to the women, leaving them with the same total earnings. But, that’s just a theory.
The 62/38 seems to me based on reality.
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