Tennis is often viewed as a global leader in gender equality with equal prize money paid to men and women at the four Grand Slams. But a major discrepancy exposed this week during the Dubai Championships has sparked condemnation from former men’s number one, Andy Murray.
In the women’s final last weekend, Latvia’s Jelena Ostapenko pocketed $104,180 after winning the women’s WTA 500 event, but her male counterpart will take home close to five times more– a cool $523,740 after he wins this Saturday.
“Obviously that’s a big step backwards, so it’s not great,” Murray told reporters on Wednesday after his 7-5, 6-2 loss to Jannik Sinner.
“If they’re the same size events one week apart, that’s quite a big discrepancy.”
Murray has been vocal in his advocacy for equality in the sport, and has made major personal statements like contracting former women’s tennis great, Amelie Mauresmo as his coach in 2020.
In an op-ed for The Guardian, he called out the double standards at play, suggesting many had been critical of his decision to work with Mauresmo purely because of her gender.
“I did well with Amélie and reached grand slam finals, but a lot of people saw the period when we worked together as a failure because I didn’t win a grand slam title,” Murray wrote. “People blamed her for that, but that wasn’t the case with my other coaches – it was always me who was the problem, and I would get the criticism when I lost. With Amélie, the questions I would get asked a lot of the time after losing matches would be about our relationship. I’ve never had that at any other time in my career.”
Murray went on to note that the “best coaches should be the best people” and that more women were needed in this capacity within professional tennis.
“There’s no way that women should represent only 11% of the best coaches, as was the case at the 2016 Rio Olympics,” he said. “Clearly more work needs to be done here. When it comes to mindset, skillset and intelligence, there’s no reason why a woman can’t be just as good as a man, and hopefully things will change when women are given more opportunities.”
In 2019 Murray labelled himself a feminist saying: “Have I become a feminist? Well, if being a feminist is about fighting so that a woman is treated like a man then, yes, I suppose I have.”