Ramesh: The Equal Pay Farce
By Chandrasekar Ramesh, Staff Columnist
Published on Wednesday, February 13, 2013
Professional French tennis player Gilles Simon was torn apart on the blogosphere last summer after commenting that female players should not receive equal pay, prompting the resurgence of equal pay advocates. While I will not defend Simon’s exact phrasing, he is correct — with the current rules, female tennis players do not deserve as much pay as male players. Advocates claim that women’s tennis has the same viewership and training regimen, and that the greater potential for upsets in women’s tennis makes it more interesting and compels equal pay for equal work. This last argument is the least persuasive, so let me begin here.
The principle of equal work for equal pay touted by advocates actually disproves their point. Men play best of five sets while women play best of three. Men are on the court for longer and play more games, for less prize money per game. If anything, this principle would mandate more pay for men, not less. Take the 2010 French Open singles matches, for example. There were 127 men’s matches, which took 18,797 minutes, while the 127 women’s matches took 11,730 minutes, meaning women were on the court less than 39 percent of the time. The women played 2,543 games while the men played 4,310. The women averaged 967.4 euros per game, while men averaged 583.49 euros per game. Never mind equal prize money — with men averaging 40 percent less winnings per game, “equal pay for equal work” seems to tell us to increase the gap.
Viewership data, on the other hand, is much more difficult to find. Based on the Nielson TV ratings data, viewership for each of the four major tournaments has been on a long-term decline since 1978, with a handful of exceptions. For example, the U.S. Open rose in viewership whenever a man from the United States was in the semifinals or higher. However, it is difficult to know in the aggregate which type of tennis is watched more. While some claim that men’s tennis is boring because men simply hold serve, others argue that they play better tennis, hit harder and serve faster.
In either case, it is a dangerous precedent to base prize money on contributions to viewership. At this past Wimbledon Championship, the early upset match of Rafael Nadal losing to Lukas Rosol had a far higher viewership than most other matches up to the quarterfinals. Does that mean that Rosol should have earned far more despite losing the very next match? When Serena Williams says, “I started playing tennis at two years old...I worked just as hard as he did,” the only real response should be “So what?” Prize money is not meant to reward the difficulty of training. It is a singular, defining recognition of excellence.
Some pragmatic advocates have suggested making all matches just best of three sets. Even if this were adopted, there is a more fundamental question underlying this entire discussion: do men play better tennis than women? Men serve faster, have a greater endurance, run faster and hit harder, so this raises the question of what we define to be “better tennis.” Some have interpreted this question as an open challenge, and this has given birth to well-known male-female matches: Will Tilden beat Suzanne Lenglen in the early 1920s to love in some sets, Bobby Riggs defeated Margaret Court in 1973 6-2, 6-1 and Jimmy Conners defeated Martina Navatilova in 1992 7-5, 6-2. Most infamously, during the 1998 Australian Open, Venus and Serena Williams claimed they could defeat any man outside the world’s top 200; Karsten Braasch, ranked 203, accepted. Braasch played a round of golf, drank several beers and smoked the morning of the match before defeating Serena 6-1 and Venus 6-2.
Bobby Riggs’ straight set loss in 1973 to women’s number one Billy Jean King is the usual rebuttal, but a young champion beating a 55 year-old man well past his prime is not an asset to the feminist cause. There is quite possibly a very good explanation for why women deserve equal pay in professional tennis, but that reason must be accompanied by a redefining of what constitutes “excellence in tennis” and why men’s triumphs do not disprove women’s accomplishments. Until then, I find it difficult to accept equal prize money in tennis majors.
It doesn’t get sillier than this. If the amount of time people play is the standard, then women soccer players should be paid as much as men, and women hockey players, too. And college players as much as the NHL pros, etc.
Pay is tied to revenue generation, which can be measured down to the nickel. Are ads for the men’s final at the U.S. Open sold for the same price/minute as ads for the women’s final? That is something that an investigative reporter can look at.
By OMG on Feb 13 | 3:56 am
Yeah, those crazy equal pay advocates! Imagine that, paying ladies the same amount as men! Before you know it, they’ll be demanding the right to vote, or the right to wear pants, God forbid. Good thing we nipped it in the bud with this article!
By eyeroll on Feb 13 | 8:57 am
It is outrageous that women are making equal prize money as men at the Grand Slams.
A few years ago, the US Open changed its nightly format. It use to be that there would be two matches on Rod Laver Arena: one female singles match followed by one male singles match. However, a few years ago they changed this schedule, so that every other night it would rotate who went first. It has turned into a horrible idea, because now whenever the men play first, a large percentage of the spectators leave and don’t stick around for the women’s match. Previously, everybody had to watch the women’s match in order to enjoy the men’s match.
Equal prize money in tennis is an absolute joke. If you seriously look at the revenue, it is horrendously more skewed than a 50/50 even split.
By RIGHT ON on Feb 13 | 10:51 am
Chandrasekar, it’s apparently becoming a regular habit of yours to write opinion pieces in The Dartmouth that say something to the extend of women don’t deserve equality with men, and it’s their fault that they are still discriminated against. You rely on a sexist framework to make your claims that sexism isn’t the problem behind equal pay. WHY do women only play 3 sets instead of 5? Did you consider that? And WHY are men’s sports almost always valued more than women’s?
You’ve cited matches where men beat women 15+ years ago to “prove” that men are “better” than women. And here we finally get to the basis of your argument: even if men and women played the same number of sets — even if women played MORE sets — and trained equally hard (which they do), you think men are better than women, and therefore deserve more money. Whether it’s tennis, where you cite 0 matches that took place in the past decade, or just in the general workforce, where you claim it’s the fault of women for not taking higher-paying jobs (and let’s be real, I’m sure deep down you think that’s because men are just better at math/science/those types of jobs, which is why you feel the need to constantly write about it in The D), you clearly are interested solely in belittling the realities of discrimination that women face every day. Instead, you rely on tired, sexist frameworks to make a misguided argument.
By Try critical thinking on Feb 13 | 11:42 am
Equal pay for equal earnings! If the men generate more advertising and ticket revenue when they play, then they should get paid more. What’s so complicated about that.
In fact, that’s the American way. The other way is “from each according to his ability to each according to his need” — but it turns out that that system doesn’t work too well.
By ‘08 on Feb 13 | 12:18 pm
Women tennis players don’t play on the men’s tour. Women golfer’s don’t play on the men’s tour. Women soccer players don’t play in the men’s games. Women’s basketball, track, hockey, volleyball, gymnastics and every other athletic endeavo,r other than a very few unpaid high school sports, separate the men from the women because the men beat the women so badly, across the board, that no women would ever win and no woman would even be in the top echelon of competitors, effectively eliminating women from professional sports. In things that require intelligence and judgment, i.e. not athletic activities, you can make a case for pay based on merit and there is no reason to doubt that they get it. Eyeroll has no case to make against the column, so Eyeroll sets up a short series of straw women. The only reason women get the same money as the men in tennis, is that the governing body gave it to them. If the women’s slams and men’s slams were held separately in tennis as they are in golf, the women would be getting the small relative paychecks that their viewership would merit.
By JellyRoll on Feb 13 | 1:58 pm
There’s an easy way to have equality here. Everyone gets an equal % of what they as individuals bring in after their share of overhead is taken care of. Any other measure is inherently unequal.
By Lizard on Feb 13 | 2:14 pm
While I am not a fan of the tone of “Try critical thinking”, I think he / she / it brings up the most important point. While the author succeeds in demonstrating that, “given the rules as they are” the pay for men and women is unfair, he fails to address the issue: the rules as they are. A lot of policies that are “unfair” for men are indeed legitimately unfair given certain conditions, but it is precisely those conditions which we should seek to rectify FIRST, not the policies. Whether you want to call these conditions the rules of tennis or the general sexist framework of our culture, the are more fundamental, thus more problematic, and thus demand the larger of our efforts in social justice.
By Anonymous on Feb 13 | 5:40 pm