Tennis star Rosemary Casals, who fought for equal pay for women, reflects on progress made

Rosemary Casals has many titles, however she nonetheless is not fairly positive tips on how to react when folks name her a residing legend.

The tennis star and equal pay advocate was certainly one of simply 9 girls who fought to shut the gender pay hole between female and male tennis gamers early in her profession. Casals started enjoying tennis in her hometown of San Francisco. Raised by immigrants from El Salvador, Casals realized the sport at Golden Gate Park. 

Sooner or later, she confronted a fellow public parks participant and soon-to-be icon: Billie Jean King.

“It left a giant impression on me. I assumed ‘God, that is the best way a professional’s speculated to look,'” Casals, now 75, recalled. “We went and performed the match. It was very, very shut. And I bear in mind after, Billie Jean saying ‘You understand, you are fairly good. You higher maintain with it, and I am going to check out you.’ … I positively thought ‘Nicely, if she will be able to inform me that I am fairly good, I higher do one thing about it.'” 

King, the world’s primary participant, quickly turned greater than a rival. She and Casals turned doubles companions and went on to win eight main championships in 9 years collectively as tennis turned knowledgeable sport. Johnette Howard, an writer and sportswriter, stated each girls had an “underdog mentality” and refused to “settle for the established order.” 

On the time, male event winners routinely netted 10 occasions more cash. Howard stated that Casals and different feminine gamers weren’t even making the “beneath the desk cash” that male gamers would possibly. 

“We have been saying ‘You understand, we’re actually shedding out on all of this if we do not do one thing,'” Casals recalled. 

In order that they determined to do one thing. 

In 1970, after promoters refused to award equal prize cash or arrange all-female tournaments, Casals, King and 7 different gamers banded collectively, forming an all-woman tour known as the Virginia Slims Circuit. 

“They stored on saying, “Nicely, you guys carry within the cash. We won’t give it to you, so for those who carry it in, we’ll do it.”. So, there it was,” Casals stated. 

Nonetheless, male gamers refused to let girls be a part of their burgeoning sports activities union, so the Ladies’s Tennis Affiliation was fashioned in 1973. Howard stated it was a “Massive Bang second for all of girls’s sports activities.”

“Every part that is occurred since has sprang from that second,” Howard stated. 

The cash started flowing in to King, Casals and the opposite gamers. The ladies’s sport turned a popular culture spectacle when King trounced former Wimbledon champion Bobby Riggs in a “Battle of the Sexes,” nonetheless the most-watched tennis match in historical past. 

Now, half a century later, a brand new technology of tennis gamers like Coco Gauff are benefitting from the inspiration laid by Casals and the unique 9. Tonight, Gauff will play the U.S. Open girls’s singles championship match, and she’s going to stroll away with at the least $1.5 million. If she wins, will probably be twice that, identical to the boys’s gamers. Will probably be the fiftieth time equal prize cash has been awarded throughout gender strains on the U.S. Open.  

Whereas the 4 main championships have been awarding equal prize cash since 2007, the pay hole persists within the sport, with male gamers profitable almost 50 million {dollars} greater than feminine gamers this 12 months. 

Final 12 months, the Monetary Occasions reported that outdoors the majors, males’s gamers earned roughly 75% greater than their feminine counterparts. In June 2023, the Ladies’s Tennis Affiliation introduced a plan to shut the hole over the subsequent decade. Nonetheless, Casals is not positive she’ll see these outcomes. 

“I haven’t got ten years,” she stated. “I imply, my gosh, it is gotta occur earlier than I die … I have been round lengthy sufficient to have the ability to notice that there is much more in my previous than in my future.” 

At 75, although, Casals remains to be combating. She’s working to make the sport extra inclusive and lifts up younger expertise by means of the “Love and Love Tennis” and the “Latin American Tennis” foundations. 

“I’ve at all times wished to unfold the love of tennis,” Casals stated. “It has been every part to me.”