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The French Open is underway in Paris and with it comes something tennis fans know is basically inevitable and that is the oncourt meltdown. Rackets get smashed, arguments erupt with umpires and emotions spill over in front of packed stadiums. From Daniel Medvidev's explosive outburst to Daniel Almire kicking a racket into the stands, tennis has never been short on bad behavior. But behind the highlight real tantrums is a bigger conversation about how the sport judges players and whether men and women are held to the same standard. It's a debate that just keeps on resurfacing. Serena Williams famously argued she was punished more harshly than male players during the 2018 US Open final. Elise Cornet sparked
backlash the same year after receiving a code violation for changing her shirt on court while male players routinely did the same. And more recently, Anjs Japour criticized the French Open for repeatedly leaving women out of prime time night sessions. And the Madrid Open faced accusations of sexism after women's doubles finalists were denied trophy speeches that the men received. And now another controversy has emerged at Roland Geros after a player was fined for saying a match needed to be umpired by a man. Well, joining us now is Dr. Sophia Solomon, a researcher at the Center for Sports Diplomacy at Ben Gurion University. Do you think there's still a double standard in how men and
women are punished or portrayed for onc court anger in tennis? Obviously, and it's not just in tennis. I mean, it also connects to your former item where uh for some reason men are allowed to express a higher level of violence or lashing out, but women simply cannot. And to be honest, that's uh you know, it's more absurd when we think about the uh u gender bias. We think about the feminist struggle. Women are always to be considered more emotional or those who cannot control their emotions. And here we can see that not only they can control their emotions, but when they uh don't do so, just like the men, they still don't get treated equally.
Why do you think male meltdowns often are framed as, you know, passion or competitiveness while similar behavior for women is more likely labeled as emotional or unprofessional? Well um as I mentioned the uh gender bias uh in sports exists even in the world of scholars. I mean you can always find in my field of research comparison between female scholars and uh male scholars but it's more than that. Sports in general we have to uh remind ourselves that it moves in a continuum of uh two uh let's say maybe contradictory ends. One is rationalism.
The high standards uh by which we follow the high standards of professionalism and we have to keep uh the game uh um as uh something that we can quantify and therefore we have to maintain our behavior. And then the other end is being too emotional and this action uh of being too emotional may take us to uh edges of violence uh um just like we saw with the fans for example but also in the world of players themselves. When we speak about violence in sports in general, it always emerges um since the beginning of the modern game actually from the players themselves and not from the fans. But what we see in tennis in uh let's say the past two decades maybe last decade is that the uh amount of crowd has the spectator uh um has uh largely being
uh bigger than what expected in years before. Therefore, and if I'm referring to uh you refer to the French Open, so uh this Thursday at the French Open, one of the uh players, Daniel Valo, uh who said that the referee should be male and not woman, um also gives us an example because he codependent it on a very demandive crowd. That's how he called it. Meaning, not only he didn't take accountability for his own things, but also blamed the judge. This is a very known uh gender bias that exists in the world of sports. But I think more than that, we see that uh violence is something that uh in a way is captured to be something masculine that is allowed in the world of men and is not allowed in the world of women
ultimately. Do you think that the women's tour actually changed and how it handles emotion or do you think that there's, you know, just more scrutiny becoming visible at this point? Exactly. I think that the last one is more accurate since we all have emotions. I mean, it doesn't matter. It's not really a question of gender. All human beings have emotions. Some take it to the extreme. As a scholar of political violence, I can tell you that it really doesn't. It's genderless.
Violence can appear in all kinds of forms. But since the amount of spectators has become larger and since there is more expectation from the players themselves, yeah, to be more competitive, you know what? When we think about it, how come in kind rock concerts we never get angry at a musician that break his uh I don't know his guitar on stage and in sport we expect something different since sport has to also take under account the uh scheme of fair play and anything that can bias the game and not in this uh set of rules might interrupt the game and I think one of the uh component that in recent years we see that becomes more And more vivid is the spectators part. And since it becomes larger, the players are under uh more pressure to perform
better, to be a eligible to get better statistics, to uh be positioned in a high place. It is also a question of being a celebrity. All of a sudden, all of a sudden, you're not playing just uh um in front of a couple of thousands uh uh spectators, but you're being watched over social media in front of millions of spectators worldwide. So, I think it's the amount of pressure that has been laying down on the players themselves, but also maybe women starting to allow themselves to be more natural. And I don't think it's a source of criticism, but maybe uh comparing between the genders. Finally. All right. I'd like to thank you so much for joining us. Interesting to hear your take, Dr. Solomon.
