by The Women’s Tennis Association announced Thursday the creation of a new initiative to support maternity for its players, the funds directly from the Saudi government and its public investment fund.
With the Pif WTA maternity fund, organizations claim that its players “will receive for the first time maternity leave paid up to 12 months and will have access to subsidies for fertility treatments to build families, as well as other advantages”.
The advantages would be offered to more than 320 eligible players. The WTA says that it is the first time in female sports that “a wide range of maternity services is made available to independent athletes”.
Former world n ° 1 Victoria Azarenka, representative of the WTA players’ council, welcomed the fund, via WRA:
“I am honored to present this program, motivated by the players, and I made possible with the support of the PIF and the WTA. This marks the beginning of a significant change in the way we support women in tennis, which facilitates the pursuit of athletes to pursue both their careers and their aspirations to see the last impact that this will have programs for generations. ”
The program is another stage of the WTA partnership with a government known in the world for its oppression of women and the LGBTQ community. The WTA ranking is also sponsored by the PIF, just like the ATP, and the WTA Tour finals took place last year in Riyadh, with Pif Money helping to increase the Prize Pool to more than $ 15 million. The event will return to Riyadh in 2025 and 2026.
Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International have repeatedly criticized the Saudi WTA relationship. The legends of Tennis Chris Evert and Martina Navratiloa were also critical, while the founder of the WTA, Billie Jean King, who would imprison and worse in Saudi Arabia as an open lesbian, described the question of “hard”.
The director general of WTA, Portia Archer, who declared in the release of the WTA that she was “delighted” by the new partnership, had dodged questions on this partner in an interview on Monday, via athletics:
“Questions about Saudi society are really not questions for me or the WTA. These are questions to the Saudis to answer. “
The press release mentioned how the PIF and the WTA have “a shared ambition to cultivate professional tennis of women, to inspire more women and girls around the world to occupy the game and to meet some of the challenges facing female athletes”.
Of course, the WTA is not the only one to accept Saudi money. Much more funds have taken place in golf sport via its Breynaway Liv golf tour, and football matches, boxing matches, MMA matches, horse races and formula 1 races have all taken place in the country in recent years.
In this case, however, money will explicitly help female athletes in an area where support was lacking in particular.
