When up-and-coming tennis star Billie Jean King took out the singles title for women at the 1968 Wimbledon Championships, she actually felt a little bit gutted.
Rod Laver, who won the men’s singles title, was rewarded 2000 pounds in prize money, while King took home only 750 pounds.
This story is one that’s been told many times, but which perfectly demonstrates the blatant discrimination in sport that people around the world have long had to fight against.
“Tennis is a truly international sport,” says Andrea Buckeridge, the Head of Women and Girls at Tennis Australia.
“We have the four Grand Slams – the French Open, Wimbledon, the US Open and the Australian Open. So the Grand Slams are really a powerful force in tennis,” she says, adding that “the US Open led the way with equal prize money over 50 years ago.”
“Australia followed and then the French followed in 2006 and Wimbledon in 2007 – it’s you know over 17 years ago, which is phenomenal.”
Explaining how we got to this point in the world of tennis, Buckeridge speaks to Dinushi Dias on today’s episode of The New Rules, a Women’s Agenda podcast taking you behind the scenes of the rise of women’s sport.
Going back to the late 60’s and early 70’s Buckeridge says there were nine women, specifically, who decided to turn the entire world of tennis upside down.
“Basically, there were nine women that signed on for $1 each to start the first women’s professional tour,” she says.”Tennis had just gone into the open era and they were playing tournaments”.
“This is Billie Jean King, and the two Australians– Kerry Melville Reed and Judy Dalton– and they were finding that sometimes at tournaments there was a twelve times difference in prize money that the men were getting [compared to] the women.”
These nine players from Australia and the US got together in September 1970 and urged Gladys Helman, the founder of World Tennis Magazine, to help them breakaway and send a message to the establishment. This led to what is now the WTA Tour, one of the world’s biggest sports organisations comprising over 50 events and four grand slams in six continents.
Women tennis players are now some of the highest paid in the world. And the original nine were inducted into the international Tennis Hall of Fame in 2020-21.
Nevertheless, there’s still much work to be done to end gender discrimination in the sport.
In a study by Victoria University, it’s found that women athletes not only want to see organisation-wide commitment to equality and improved financial investment, they also want to see collaboration between athletes and sports organisations.
They want this collaboration to help build a culture where female athletes can perform at their best, are empowered to build long-term careers and can achieve success. This includes addressing gender-based barriers and implementing innovative practices to support women in professional sports.
Professor Clare Hanlon, one of the lead researchers, says the team spent three years working on evidence-based solutions to help do this.
“We produced a resource that people can download,” says Professor Hanlon. “It’s called ‘Forging a New Path to Success for Women in Professional Team Sports’, and it’s research for evidence-based action.”
“It’s for sports to have a look, as well as researchers, as well as sponsors and media to have a look, and see what can be done to further advance the pay and the conditions, generally, for women playing sport.”
Professor Hanlon also says the research talks about the influence that players hold when male athletes speak out for improved conditions for female athletes.
“What we found was that if women and men got together and negotiated [with players’ associations], women’s conditions actually improved more than if [the women] had just gone in by themselves,” she says.
“[We’re also] looking at conditions in the context of what type of condition– and, of course, they vary amongst sports.”
“But looking at contracts, and what that involves, and how do we try and get women on full time pay rather than having to juggle life work.”
To hear more of the conversation with Andrea Buckeridge and Professor Clare Hanlon, check out the sixth episode of Women’s Agenda’s The New Rules podcast. You can find it below, or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.