‘She Had to Pretend to Be a Guy’ – Venus Williams Details the Fights of Women for Equality and How Her Mother Oracene Impacted It

Women’s tennis has had many glorious moments in history. From Martina Navratilova’s domination on the tennis court to Billie Jean King and Venus Williams’ successful fight against the gender pay gap, these moments changed the face of women’s tennis. Recently, seven-time women’s singles Grand Slam champion, Venus Williams, opened up about her fight against this grim issue.

Venus Williams, inspired by her mother

The elder Williams sister carried the baton from Billie Jean King to fight gender inequality. Billie Jean King played a pivotal role in eradicating gender-based pay from the US Open. Similarly, Venus fought to eradicate this problem from the entire women’s tour. Further, talking about how her mother inspired her in this fight, she said, “My mom was an inspiration. She’s a wonderful, fun lady, strong lady, good tennis player, and a great cook. She’s also very spiritually strong, so it gave us an opportunity to have belief and hope and to be calm and not be stressed about the regular worries of the day.”

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Further, talking about her fight, Venus said, “We been fighting thousands of years of inequity, so we can’t think that [change] is going to happen overnight. We want it to, and we work at a pace so that it could be, theoretically, but it’s about changing minds, changing cultures, changing history, and it’s about not giving up.”

Venus opens up about what led her to fight against the gender pay gap

The former World Number raised her voice against this issue from a very young age. Recounting the reasons for what led her to this, she said, “Getting there and realizing, ‘Wow, I’m not being paid equally,’ was just definitely a slap in the face to a 16-year-old. It hit me hard.”

Moreover, she went on to say, “Two short years later, after 30-plus years of fighting for equal prize money, we finally arrived. It was a wonderful moment. It wasn’t until the ’60s that a woman first ran a marathon, and she had to pretend to be a guy.”

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Further, Venus’ fight bore fruit during the 2007 Wimbledon Championships. After she won the tournament, Venus became the first player to receive equal prize money as men. Subsequently, other major tournaments followed suit and awarded equal prize money for men and women. This chapter went down in the history book of tennis. Moreover, it completely changed women’s tennis as we see it today.