Stop sexism at Wimbledon - pay women less than men!

Imagine you were a male office worker processing insurance claims (or something equally rivetting). The office is “gender-balanced” (or whatever the management-speak phrase for this might be). All of the men process more claims per hour than the women, and their work is more accurate – i.e. they’re better at the job.

In addition, the women work a maximum of three days a week (sometimes it’s only two, depending on how fast they work) while the men work a maximum five-day week, but, if they’re really “in the zone”, or the insurance claims are particularly simple that week, they can get away with doing three days for the same pay.

The female claims processors, who, on average, spend a third less time at work than their male colleagues, and none of whom is as good at the job as any of the men in the office, are guaranteed the same salary and bonus structure as the blokes. In effect, a woman can earn the same as a man for doing much less work and not doing it as well.

If such a state of affairs existed in any office in the land, can you imagine the uproar it would cause? Pickets, strikes and industrial tribunals would inevitably follow.

But at Wimbledon – and the other three Grand Slam tournaments – this is exactly what happens. On Saturday, Serena Williams will pocket £1,000,000 for winning the tournament, as either Nadal, Soderling, Djokovic, Federer or Murray will for doing the same thing on Sunday. But all of them will have spent a lot more time on court. And any of them could beat Ms. Williams 6-0, 6-0 in under 30 minutes (if they stopped toweling off between each point, doinking the ball incessantly, or pulling their shorts out of their bum-crack). And if all the blokes decided not to turn up at Wimbledon, attendance would plummet, while, if the women decided to take a year off, it would still be massively oversubscribed.

Now, for the top players, who make most of their money from endorsements, this may not matter much, but think of a relatively unheralded player like Nicolas Mahut. He will have trousered £11,500 for battling for eleven hours and five minutes in the first-round match he lost to John Isner – the same as doughnut addict Natasha Cantreachtheballovic from Slovakia and heavily subsidized Tracy Useless from Nuneaton got for being thrashed 6-0, 6-1 in ten minutes on adjacent courts. 

How can this be fair? 

Does Paula Radcliffe run a two-thirds marathon? Do female runners compete in the 6,666.6 metre final? Does a women’s football match last for a total of one hour?

It’s not Serena Williams’s fault that her first three opponents at this year’s Wimbledon were so inferior that the first set in each match was a “bagel” (yes, it annoys me too). 6-0 happens in men’s tennis as well, albeit far less frequently. But I don’t see why Ms. Williams should be picking up a six-bagel reward (sorry!) for contesting a maximum of 21 sets when her male equivalent might have been asked to play 35. 

That’s sexism, isn’t it?