Jeļena Ostapenko stormed to victory at the Dubai Tennis Championships last Saturday, but the Latvian earned just 20 percent of what the equivalent men’s winner will make this week. The Dubai Tennis Championships are professional tournaments held on outdoor hardcourts for men and women on the ATP and WTA tour respectively.Ostapenko defeated Veronika Kudermetova in straight sets to claim her fifth WTA title, while the men are competing this week, with Russia’s Aslan Karatsev aiming to defend his crown from last year. The women’s event featured eight of the top 10 players in the world and Ostapenko is a Grand Slam champion in her own right, having won the 2017 French Open. Yet, the Latvian took home just one-fifth of the prize money the men’s winner will do, despite both events being worth the same number of ranking points. Tennis has long been considered the model for gender equality when it comes to sport. Thanks to the influence of iconic figures such as Billie Jean King and the Williams sisters, every Grand Slam tournament now offers equal prize money to men and women. Though it is true that the gender pay gap in tennis is less than in many other elite sports, the reality is that outside of these major tournaments, the disparity is still huge. In Dubai, the men’s winner will earn $523,740. Ostapenko, meanwhile, ended up with $104,180. At other competitions, like the Citi Open, the difference is even more drastic. Despite scrapping the women’s tournament during the pandemic, the tournament’s website still professes to have a combined men’s and women’s event and shows that the men’s prize money was nine times that of the women’s. What’s more is that there is little justification for doing this, other than that the tournament “do not always combine events with the same tour tier levels.”

Another argument often used in support of this prize-money disparity is that the men’s game is more of a draw than women’s tennis. 

However, recent Grand Slam viewing figures exemplify that this is not the case. At last year’s US Open, Novak Djokovic had the chance to complete the Calendar Slam and become the most successful men’s player in history. 

Yet, The Serb’s final against Daniil Medvedev drew an average of just 2.05 million viewers on ESPN, peaking at 2.7 million. 

In comparison, Emma Raducanu’s remarkable win against Leylah Fernandez was watched by an average of 2.44 million in the US and attracted a staggering 9.2 million viewers in the UK. 

Similarly, Ashleigh Barty’s victory at the Australian Open this year was the fourth most-watched tennis match in Australia since records began and garnered almost twice the number of viewers as the men’s final the following day. 

Ostapenko will be delighted by her performance in Dubai –– her first title since June 2021. 

But though this victory is another milestone in her professional career, her prize for winning serves as a reminder that the road to gender equality is still ongoing.