Of course, I hit like a girl. You could too, if you hit a little harder.

“Is it fair, that women are paid significantly less than men in sports?” This question has raised a lot of heated debates among sports journalists and athletes. I, being a female athlete myself, am not going to watch that debate from the sideline – instead, I am going to take a full “swing” at it.

In almost every third sport, men participating in competitions receive a more substantial monetary reward than women. These are the results of a study by the BBC. In absolute numbers, the most significant gap between the fees of men and women athletes was found in football, cricket, golf, darts, snooker and squash.

According to some sources, tennis is considered “gender equal” sport in terms of prize money. But I am here to prove that it is far from the truth.

Now let’s talk numbers.

Discrimination against women is also constantly discussed in the context of prizes, which are lower on average in the WTA round than in the men’s. At the smallest WTA tournaments (International category), the minimum prize pool is 250 thousand dollars, and the maximum is 750 thousand. In the ATR tour at the lowest level (250 tournaments) there are nowhere less than 457 thousand, and in Chengdu, St. Petersburg and Doha they generally pay more than a million. At the most prestigious tour competitions, men also earn more – about $ 2 million.

The main problem is that women’s tournaments are on average less profitable than men’s.

I have been told a bunch of things by the representatives of the men’s tennis collegiate team on this topic while being on a respective women’s team in the United States.

“Men’s tennis is more interesting!”

“Who even wants to watch women’s tennis – it’s so boring!”

“Women’s tennis is all emotions!”

“I bet you won’t be able to return my serve. When you are – then let’s talk about equal prize money.”

“Serena wouldn’t win a single game from Roger. Why should she be paid the same?” (That statement hasn’t been proved, I bet she sure can!)

I have actually recently read an interview with a tennis legend John McEnroe about Serena Williams. He was first asked if he thinks she is the best female tennis player, which he instantly agreed with. He was then asked if he thinks she is the best player in the world.

To which McEnroe replied: “Oh! Uh, she’s not, you mean, the best player in the world, period?”

“Well because if she was in, if she played the men’s circuit she’d be like 700 in the world. That doesn’t mean I don’t think Serena is an incredible player. I do, but the reality of what would happen would be I think something that perhaps it’d be a little higher, perhaps it’d be a little lower. And on a given day, Serena could beat some players. I believe because she’s so incredibly strong mentally that she could overcome some situations where players would choke ’cause she’s been in it so many times, so many situations at Wimbledon, The U.S. Open, etc. But if she had to just play the circuit — the men’s circuit — that would be an entirely different story,” said McEnroe.

To me really it’s not about whether or not women are better than men at tennis or at any other sport, you name it. It’s about the hard work being paid off.

Unfortunately, money isn’t the only case of sexism in tennis. Have you ever heard of a male tennis player being called out and fined for changing his shirt on court? Neither have I. Just on one single US Open Grand Slam tournament there were at least two scandals: due to a French player Elise Cornet’s penalty for dressing up on the court and refereeing in the final between Osaka and Williams. In both cases, the WTA leadership condemned any bias.

The list goes on and on and on. But that, nevertheless, doesn’t change my opinion. Us, girls, we work just as hard as anyone else – if not harder. So we definitely deserve more attention, more interest andmost importantly, equality in pay. And I am talking every sport.