The WTA agreed a three-year deal for Saudi Arabia to host a event which sees the eight main ladies’s singles gamers and greatest eight doubles groups of the season compete.
This 12 months’s complete prize cash of $15.5m (£12m) is the biggest in ladies’s sports activities historical past, says the WTA.
Many critics declare the funding into top-class sport is a transfer to realize legitimacy and deflect consideration from controversy over Saudi Arabia’s human rights report, a observe generally known as ‘sportswashing’.
Whereas there have been reforms – the ban on ladies driving, for instance, was formally lifted in 2018 – considerations concerning the kingdom’s suitability to host outstanding ladies’s sport occasions stay.
“There continues to be gender-based discrimination in most elements of household life, together with in marriage, divorce and baby custody,” Fakih instructed BBC Sport.
The Saudi Tennis Federation (STF) was requested by BBC Sport to deal with these considerations throughout the WTA Finals, however didn’t make any of its officers out there for interview.
Marketing campaign group People Rights Watch say there isn’t any proof the WTA’s presence is enhancing ladies’s rights in Saudi, pointing to an “absence of motion” in instances involving ladies imprisoned for advocating for change.
Manahel al-Otaibi, a health influencer and activist, is serving a five-year jail sentence for tweets supporting ladies’s rights.
“The Saudi authorities proceed to detain my sister whereas they persist of their charade of whitewashing their picture and claiming to empower ladies in entrance of Western media,” her sister Fawzia al-Otaibi instructed BBC Sport.
Al-Otaibi’s different sister Mariam stays underneath a journey ban, whereas going through restrictions on her speech and entry to authorities companies, in line with People Rights Watch.
“Seeing human rights defenders who had been jailed and are nonetheless being imprisoned at this time – instances which had been recognized earlier than the WTA went in – is an efficient indicator of the dearth of progress,” Minky Worden, director of worldwide initiatives at Human Rights Watch, mentioned.
“It is clear the Saudi authorities do not feel any significant stress to do something.”
Muguruza has visited the Kingdom a number of instances for the reason that Finals moved there, going into communities to go to faculties and golf equipment with a spotlight of attracting extra feminine tennis gamers.
From these experiences, she says the ladies she has met are “so pleased” the occasion is going down on their doorsteps.
Requested if she is fielding considerations about ‘sportswashing’, Muguruza mentioned: “No, I do not suppose so.
“That was in all probability a dialog two years in the past or one thing when folks had been extra unfamiliarised with the sports activities right here, however I believe that is over.
“There are such a lot of occasions right here in sports activities and it has been very profitable. I do not really feel that, no.”
