This is not the first time that Rafael Nadal has sparked discussion about equality – or inequality – between men and women in tennis. Five years ago, when he was at his peak and holding the best tournaments on the ATP circuit, he had also done so with the same productivist vision. “In some things women will earn more and in others men, but you have to earn more or less not because you are better, not because you are a man or a woman. If not for the merits and for what you generate,” Nadal had said in 2019, before debuting at the Madrid Master.
Now, sidelined from the circuit due to a series of injuries that bring him closer to retirement, Rafa reignited the debate: “I’m not a hypocrite. I don’t like being one and saying things that are easy for me to say and that I don’t think about,” he said when journalist Ana Pastor told him that she was uncomfortable talking about these issues. There, Rafa developed a theory that he has been holding for years: “Investment in women’s sports should be the same as in men’s sports… But not salaries. Because? What is unfair is that there is no equality. A man and a woman deserve the same opportunities. But the term feminism is taken to extremes. Equality does not lie in giving away. The equality is that if Serena Williams earns more than me, she will have to earn more than me. “I don’t want to win more than Serena for being Rafa Nadal.”
As happens at this time, the fragment of that interview was cut, went viral on networks and spread around the world. Nadal talked about many more topics in the conversation, such as his fatherhood, his relationship with his son, and that he would not like him to dedicate himself to tennis like him (“I would prefer him to practice another sport, if I’m honest. It pains me to say it because of everything.” what this sport has given me, and if he wants to play tennis, I would support him 100%”). However, what stood out was what he thought about pay parity in sports.
Mónica Santino, soccer player and soccer coach, explains her view: “I find Nadal’s argument fallacious. We are talking about high-performance sports, competitions also marked by business and the entertainment industry, and it is impossible for women and diversities to have the same opportunities in that cultural framework as he and other players may have. Women start from absolutely unequal places.” And she adds: “He reveals some machismo in his words because he thinks that feminism is only a movement that equalizes, and not that it is pointing out oppression. An oppression that is marked in the culture and in our customs that has been going on for centuries.”
María Alejandra Castiñeira de Dios, lawyer, member of the Women in Equality Foundation and former tennis player, adds: “More than the concept of equal opportunities, I like to talk about equality, substantive and real, as that which allows you access and fully exercise your rights. In the case of sport, women still face a whole series of barriers, which often have to do with stereotypes or cultural patterns, which do not generate the same full use and enjoyment of the rights to be able to do sport.”
Santino remembers that the feminist movement in sports was started by tennis players like Billie Jean King and Martina Navrátilová and that this sport “was a great bastion of struggle and a great conqueror of rights for women,” especially in the United States.
Castiñeira de Dios assures that part of what Nadal said “is excellent”, but to reach that equality he mentions, “there is a whole other issue that has not yet been settled.”