Moaning Wummin Tennis Players

Wimbledon starts today. I love Wimbledon and between this and the World Cup I'll be spending most of my time watching sport over the next couple of weeks. But it's time for the annual whine from women tennis players about inequality of pay and how they should be paid the same as their male counterparts.

Why?

At Wimbledon a man's match is the best of five sets, a woman's is the best of three. Women don't do the same job as men in this particular tournament. In those tournaments where both men and women play the best of three sets then of course the pay should be exactly the same, but at Wimbledon men are paid more because they do more work.

Women's matches are best of three because it is regarded that women don't have the physical strength or stamina to cope with five sets - that is patently nonsense, I wouldn't like to tell Venus or Kim that they had less stamina than Andy Roddick because I very much doubt it's true - but they can't have it both ways.

If women played five set matches they should be paid the same as men, but they don't. £30,000 less for potentially hours and hours less work... not a bad deal.

Let's not worry about how much money very very rch people earn, but focus on the fact that a woman who works full time will earn 17% less than a man in full time work and that women are still working in the lowest paid jobs in Britain. Why do some sectors such as Banking have gender pay gaps of over 40%?

So Venus et al, while I believe strongly in equal pay for equal work, excuse me if I don't shed a tear for you earning only £625,000 for two weeks work.