CASE STUDY 1: EQUAL PRIZE MONEY IN TENNIS A British cabinet minister has now stepped into the debate regarding equal prize money at Wimbledon, the British Open tennis championships. Patricia Hewitt (no relation to the men’s winner), the Trade and Industry Secretary, announced that it is ‘simply wrong’ that the winner of the men’s singles should collect £525,000, while the women’s winner should receive only £486,000, when they had both worked equally hard. The debate regarding prize money is not new, and has aroused some strong feelings in the last ten years. The 1996 men’s champion, Richard Krajicek, commented in 1992 that most women players were ‘fat, lazy pigs’ who deserved to win less. This attracted a storm of protest from many supporters of women’s tennis, and these supporters and lobbyists have been successful in gradually reducing the differentials in prize money. Tim Henman, the British number one player, attracted criticism in 1999 for accusing female players of being ‘greedy’ in demanding g more prize money in ‘Grand Slam’ tournaments. The situation in 2002 was that
CASE STUDY 1: EQUAL PRIZE MONEY IN TENNIS A British cabinet minister has now stepped into the debate regarding […]