back of a spreadsheet; back of the net

Something cropped up on the radio this morning that I've been mulling over to no great effect today.

The organiser of the Indian Wells tennis tournament suggested that women's tennis was economically dependent on the draw of men's tennis. He chose to couch this view in some inflamatory language. Serena Williams suggested that this was not the case. Robustly. Novak Djokovic in a nuanced response said that he thought prize money should correspond with the financial draw of the event and the competitors.

Which got me thinking about equality and what it means and how it's measured and how it's enforced.

As a general principle I think men and women should be paid the same for doing the same work. They should be paid the same for doing equivalent work. We should systematically lower barriers that restrict people taking on work or which segregates employment by sex or gender as much as possible. A male surgeon and a female surgeon should earn (on average) the same. Office cleaners (mostly female) should earn about the same as bin collectors (mostly male). The access of women to senior positions in the professions should be facillitated and the access of men to work in nursing or primary school teaching or at home with dependent children likewise. Senior bosses are over paid. Nurses and primary school teachers under paid. Some of this is to do with the gender doing the work.

If there are significant gaps in pay between sexes and genders doing the same work that's not right and the existing legal remedies should be deployed. With vigour. I'm open to the argument that the existing legal remedies are insuffient and should be enhanced. I'm not entirely persuaded that new remedies are required rather than more vigorous use of the current remedies but there's a discussion to be had.

Where things get a bit murkier for me is exactly the situation of sports players or entertainers where the volumes of participants are so low that an element of delectus personae - choice of the person - exists. If people would rather watch Novak Djokavic play tennis against Andy Murray than watch Serena Williams play Venus Williams then, on first examination, isn't that their decision and shouldn't Djokavic be free to reap the reward of his personal draw and fandom through higher income?

Ditto a comparison of Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman's earnings.

But then, as a society and as individuals do we value tennis played by men more because it, being played by men, is *proper* tennis. And tennis played by women is, by virtue of being played by women, not proper tennis but a lesser immitation. It is certainly the case that in sports played by men and by women, the women's game is seen as less worthy and less popular. In sports played primarily by women professional wages are low.

There's clearly (to me at least) something structural going on about how we value women and the work or sport they do.

But it's not entirely clear to me how we say to Djokavic - it's all well and good that people paid a £9 million to watch you play tennis and only paid £1 million to watch Williams play tennis but we're going to pay you both £5 million. (Assuming that it is the case that more people will pay more money to watch Djokavic than Williams.)

It's certainly not clear to me how we would enforce such a decision and require a transfer of money from the Djokavic to Williams in any legal system that respects the rights of the individual to make contracts to their own benefit of their own free will.

So, I'm a bit puzzled.