Daria Kasatkina recently made a loud statement in regard to the ongoing issue of Equal Pay for female tennis players. She made it very clear that while the comparison between men’s and women’s games isn’t parallel or equal, a serious raise in women’s pay should be considered and be implemented immediately the the WTA.
Kasatkina expressed that female players are raising the banners for increased pay and fair compensation. According to her statements on the Russian podcast “What’s on the Tour?”, Kasatkina suggested that women in tennis are aware that the WTA has the financial capacity to remunerate them at a higher level than their current earnings.
“It’s absolutely normal when you work and you want the best, you want to be paid more. Especially when you know that the capacity to pay is there. We know a little bit more than others, so we’re not satisfied. That’s what we’re fighting for.”
Although gender equality in terms of prize money has been achieved in Grand Slams and Masters 1000/WTA 1000 events, the parity doesn’t extend uniformly across all tournaments. In some other competitions like the WTA 250 or WTA 125 Tour tournaments, a discrepancy in the prize money awarded to men and women is still present.
“Comparing men’s and women’s sports makes no sense at all. I don’t understand why we’re doing it, we’re not competing with each other. I think the topic of equal prize money was not invented by tennis players. We realise that this is impossible nowadays. We want our prize money to increase.”
Daria Kasatkina accuses the WTA of not promoting the Women’s game appropriately
The World No. 18, Daria Kasatkina also didn’t shy away from targeting the Women’s Tennis Association (WTA) for improperly handling the publicity of female sports.
The Russian expressed her views in a very blunt way stating that the WTA purposely doesn’t promote women’s tennis. She criticized the move of stepping away from Tennis TV to create the WTA TV by the organization.
She also pointed out that the new WTA TV has negligible presence on the internet and even a search for it won’t showcase the channel in results.
The WTA’s handling of their TikTok handles was also questioned by the Russian player.
Daria Kasatkina says WTA TV is one of the worst platforms & WTA doesn’t intentionally promote women’s tennis:
— The Tennis Letter (@TheTennisLetter) December 26, 2023
“I wouldn't separate WTA from TennisTV. It used to be one thing. Now WTA TV is one of the worst platforms, you can't even find it on a web search. TennisTV is the… pic.twitter.com/Lpa3egX8Ij
