Welcome to the second edition of Women’s Sport Insider! 

We’re in the midst of an incredible summer for women’s sport. The Women’s EURO 2025 is well and truly living up to expectations in Switzerland, while the Women’s Rugby World Cup is just around the corner. 

But the focus of this month’s edition is Wimbledon, once again the stage for a brilliant women’s tournament which culminated with Iga Świątek’s victory against Amanda Anisimova. 

In our main feature, guest writer Molly McElwee – an award-winning sports journalist and author of Building Champions – takes a deep dive into the current state of women’s tennis. From equal prize money to maternity rights, Molly explores both the strides made and the challenges that remain in women’s tennis today. 

Rallying for change: The current state of women's tennis

On the first Friday night at Wimbledon this year, the main attraction was women’s tennis. Hometown favourite Emma Raducanu and world No. 1 Aryna Sabalenka’s tantalising third round match got top billing, under the roof and the lights inside a packed-out Centre Court. It turned out to be a riveting, intense contest, one of the matches of the tournament, and attracted a peak audience of five million on the BBC. 

Not bad, considering the French Open failed to schedule a single women’s match in their “match of the day” slot last month, and reportedly even declined television broadcasters’ requests to include women in the primetime night session. 

That contrast just about sums up the current state of play when it comes to women’s tennis: there is plenty to cheer about when it comes to progressive strides happening on and off the court but, amid all of that, there are still regular reminders that the long walk to equality is not yet over. 

For the last 50 years or so, tennis has led the way when it comes to women’s sport, in terms of professionalism, prize money and opportunities for female athletes to compete on the same stage as their male counterparts. According to Sportico, tennis players account for nine of the top 15 best paid women athletes for 2024 – an indicator of the interest from fans, appeal for sponsors and just how much more lucrative a career it can be for the top players compared to other sports. 

Spearheaded by the pioneering work of Billie Jean King, all four Grand Slams – Wimbledon, Roland Garros, and the Australian and US Opens – have awarded equal prize money since 2007. There remains a significant prize money gap elsewhere on tour though, as differing minimum levels are set by the WTA and ATP.

We saw that in the last month, as The Queen’s Club kicked off the British grass court season by hosting a women’s tennis tournament for the first time since 1973. While the women’s total prize pot was £1.043m, the men's was set at more than double (£2.122m) — even though both were ‘500’ category tournaments.

It must be said, work is being done to try to improve things. The Lawn Tennis Association, which governs British tennis, has pledged to boost the women’s prize money to the same level as the men’s at Queen’s and in Eastbourne by 2029. It is a welcome commitment, but not one that applies across the entire tour calendar. 

Away from earnings, maternity cover has been a hot topic in recent months as tennis has followed the lead of team sports like the WNBA by introducing enhanced maternity provisions this season. In March, the WTA added maternity pay to support mothers with 12 months of financial help during pregnancy and post-partum breaks, as well as grants for fertility treatment.

There was some criticism, in that the fund is sponsored entirely by Saudi Arabia's Public Investment Fund – human rights organisations such as Amnesty International report that women continue to face discrimination in the country – but players broadly welcomed the development.

Alongside that, in June the WTA went a step further in extending protected ranking protocols for players undergoing fertility treatment. The ruling already applied to new mothers, but now also includes any players inside the top 750 who miss at least 10 weeks of competitive tennis due to procedures like egg-freezing. 

Tokyo 2020 Olympic champion Belinda Bencic, who embarked on a fairytale run to the Wimbledon semi-finals before losing to eventual winner Iga Świątek, returned to the tour last season after the birth of her first child 15 months ago. She says it feels like the best time in history to be a mother in tennis.

“I definitely think so, it's been going in the right direction for sure in the past years,” Bencic told reporters at Wimbledon. “The WTA is really leading the way also for other sports, which I think is absolutely great.

“It will make a lot of decisions easier for other female tennis players at the moment to have a family and to take that decision. I hope that we are leading the way and, of course, showing that it's more and more possible. I got inspired by other athletes having a baby and coming back.”

As with everything, she says there does remain “room for improvement” – namely making the calendar less gruelling and rules about mandatory tournaments less rigid.

“For us athletes – for everyone, not just for mums – I think the season is crazy,” Bencic said. “It's impossible to play so many mandatory tournaments that we have. To finish a season in the middle of November and then having to fly to Australia in the middle of December, it’s just really difficult. Now even more difficult to combine this with your family. There are for sure going to be tournaments that I'm going to choose to play and tournaments that I will just not be able to play.”

When I spoke with four-time major champion Naomi Osaka for the Financial Times before Wimbledon, she shared a similar sentiment about a lack of flexibility when it came to entering tournaments while on her own maternity leave comeback: “I’ve had a couple [of] instances where I don’t think the tour has given mums the benefit of the doubt in prioritising their wellbeing and understanding the actual challenges of the post-pregnancy comeback.”

Closer to home, all signs are pointing to tennis becoming a more equitable sport where women are at the forefront. At the helm of Wimbledon for example, three women are in the top jobs: chief executive Sally Bolton, tournament referee Denise Parnell and All England Club chair, Debbie Jevans. In 2022, the LTA also set its sights on making tennis and padel gender equal sports through their She Rallies campaign.

Since then, annual participation among women has grown by 640,000, 50 per cent of junior players aged four to 15 are now female and the number of accredited female coaches has risen by 33 per cent. Still, there remain fewer women than men playing tennis in the UK – currently a 61-39 male-female split – as well as fewer women in the on-court workforce, and only 24 per cent of accredited coaches are women. In the last month the LTA made renewed commitments to close those gaps, but they continue to exist broadly across the world in the sport.

Stars like Raducanu and Sabalenka, as well as Świątek and Coco Gauff, are raising their levels on court, as well as attracting sponsor money across beauty, fashion, banking, airlines and more. But don’t be fooled by the glitz of a Wimbledon summer, the fight to make this sport a truly level playing field for them – and for the girls who follow in their footsteps – continues.