Bianca Andreescu is aware of a big a part of her job takes place away from the tennis courtroom, in moments she could not actually have a racket in her hand.
Whether or not she’s signing a ball or writing a ebook for youths, the Canadian tennis star needs to be an inspiration for the following era and assist make her sport higher for the ladies who’ll comply with.
The push for gender fairness in tennis — notably when it comes to what athletes are paid — is a “lovely factor,” Andreescu mentioned.
“In my expertise, clearly, I haven’t bought paid in lots of tournaments identical to the boys, however I do know that it’s getting higher,” mentioned the previous U.S. Open winner.
“We do should thank Billie Jean King for that, as a result of she’s the one which paved the way in which. And I believe our accountability as athletes now, males or girls, it’s simply to get that to, I suppose, perfection.”
It’s been greater than 50 years since tennis legend and feminist icon King trounced Bobby Riggs within the Battle of the Sexes exhibition match, however disparities between males’s and ladies’s funding and accessibility nonetheless reign via many sports activities.
“There’ll all the time be work to do on this area as a result of it’s not even only for girls and for women, it’s different equity-deserving teams that want accessibility to sport,” mentioned Eva Havaris, a senior vice-president with Tennis Canada. “So this work will simply all the time be ongoing.”
Andreescu’s newest push for change comes within the type of a Tennis Canada marketing campaign on gender fairness.
The brand new video talks about colors within the sport, from conventional tennis whites as to if a ball is inexperienced or yellow. Photographs then shift to a lilac purple color — the color many teams have beforehand used to showcase their help for gender fairness — and discuss turns to how girls athletes nonetheless earn lower than their male counterparts.
On the display, Andreescu sits in a purple umpires chair, flexing.
The scene was filmed throughout final summer time’s Nationwide Financial institution Open in Toronto, the place Tennis Canada and the match organizers opted to color the chairs in an effort to create dialog round gender fairness.
“Folks have been tremendous interested in it. It created numerous dialog,” Havaris mentioned. “Definitely in tennis, numerous issues are form of white. So when individuals noticed this, it was like, ‘Oh, what’s that about?’ It prompted individuals to speak about it.”
Andreescu was simply ending up observe when a movie crew close by requested if she needed to participate.
“I mentioned, ‘In fact.’ I imply one thing like this, that is what I stand for,” mentioned the 24-year-old from Mississauga, Ont. “So it turned out very superbly, and I believe it’s finished rather well.”
The Nationwide Financial institution Open is among the tournaments working to pay fairness between athletes on the boys’s and ladies’s sides.
In 2025, the match’s WTA prize cash is ready to achieve almost 60 per cent of the ATP pot as each occasions develop to 12-day foremost draw codecs. And in 2027, the ladies’s winner will take residence as a lot as the boys’s.
The whole WTA prize cash on the NBO in 2027 is anticipated to be not less than US$10 million — a 350 per cent improve over the award in 2023.
“It’s undoubtedly taken some time,” mentioned Andreescu, who gained the match in 2019. “However I imply, the extra that we are able to simply proceed, creating initiatives like (the present marketing campaign) and talking up about it, it’ll be wonderful to witness that. So I’m very grateful.”
Tennis Canada’s newest push for gender fairness comes at a time when girls’s sports activities are gaining new floor — and eyeballs — internationally.
The Skilled Girls’s Hockey League set a number of data for attendance in its inaugural season, and the WNBA introduced in Might that it’s increasing to Toronto.
“I believe even simply individuals displaying up for ladies’s sport now, and the sizes of the viewers and the viewership, it simply tells you a lot about its information,” Havaris mentioned. “The sports activities communicate for themselves, the athletes communicate for themselves and their potential. And now it’s much more accessible and much more seen.”
Andreescu has been absorbing girls’s sports activities, too. She went to her first WNBA sport in New York lately and was amazed by the play of Liberty guard Sabrina Ionescu.
The tennis sensation mentioned she’s had alternatives to fulfill girls play on the highest ranges of their sports activities, together with Canadian hockey nice Marie-Philip Poulin, and has all the time discovered their conversations concerning the similarities and challenges they face to be enlightening.
Having these talks is essential to the continued development of ladies’s sports activities, Andreescu mentioned.
“Solely us girls in sport can really, really relate to 1 one other,” she mentioned. “So it’s good to have that sort of connection.”
