The only thing grand about Wimbledon, is the slam in the face is serves up to the women in the tournament. Although we are moving ever closer to true gender equality, sexual discrimination is still rampant in our society. We are all dominated by ideas of hegemonic masculinity, that is, that males must be competitive, aggressive, suppress their emotion and hold overall power. This is not only reflected in our general society, but in sport as well, particularly professional tennis. Sport is not a separate entity, but an integral part of society and also underpinned by the same hegemonic masculinity and emphasized femininity as society, which these days can loosely be classified as sexual discrimination. Women are disadvantaged in many ways, but perhaps the three most influential areas in both sport and society are wage/prize money differentials, lack of power and managerial positions and marketing/sexual exploitation. This analytical exposition will focus primarily on the 3 aforementioned areas of female disadvantage, clearly highlighting the trends and similarities between the treatment of women in society and women in professional tennis.
             The male/female wage differential has always existed and found not only in the workplace, but is reflected in other areas of society such as sport, particularly professional tennis. Traditionally, men were the bread winners of the family and it's only within the last 20-30 years that women have begun to even things up (Rogers, M. 2000). Although numbers of men and women in the workforce are relatively even, salaries are definitely not. According to Rose and Hartman (1998), the total career earnings of a female are only 44% of the average career earnings of a male. When weekly salaries are concerned, women are pegged at a mere 77% of men's wages (Bernstein, 2004). So despite the 'equal pay for equal work' legislation, there is still a noticeable gap between average male and fema...