Tennis: Just one example of why men and women still aren't equal
Maria Sharapova works in more ways than one for her paycheck...
There's no suffragettes any more, there's feminists, sure, but who wants to be labelled one of them? All in all, us girls have accepted that we're getting an equal deal to the men, and we're all too busy going about being career women to bother about fighting the corner for women. Because we don't need to any more, right?
Wrong.
Name a famous female sports person. Now name another. Right now another. And another? Ideas running low yet? Not only is our list of female sports icons direly short compared to the men, but they're getting paid less for it, too. Until this year, women players didn't get equal pay at Wimbledon, in fact even as recently as 1999, men were awarded a higher pay rise than the women. Apparently they wanted to keep the pay gap as a point of principle. Umm, what principle exactly?
The sexist principle? One clever clogs, (quite obviously a man) claimed that women always got paid more pro rata at Wimbledon than the men, because they play less sets. Now, since when tennis been about quantity rather than quality? In fact, I'm quite sure the enjoyment per set (for men at least) is much higher when Maria "grunt-a-lot" Sharapova is playing than Greg Rusedski.
But perhaps even more depressing than the hard fact that the pay gap has only just been closed, is the reaction to the news. On a Telegraph article reporting equal pay, the first comment is, "girls r shit at tennis boys are better :)", followed swiftly by "the current situation now definitely discriminates against men.". Say what? The chap, full name Alex Syed, goes on to say, "women can't just cherry pick the situations where they have parity with men". No mate, we're not trying to. We should be equal in every situation.
Are men always destined to overpower us just because they're genetically stronger. Just because they have more testosterone does that mean they deserve more money?
Add to this the fact that female sports stars all too frequently appear bikini-clad in mens' magazines, and I'm even less convinced of this equality we're apparently enjoying. Maria Sharapova is the highest earning sports women in the world. But is that because she's won the most tournaments, or because she's attractive enough to get the most magazine shoots and sponsorship deals? I'm taking a wild stab at the latter. Maybe I will become a feminist after all...
Charlotte Howells also edits Nollie and Kiss and Makeup.
