New WTA maternity fund is ‘monumental change’ for women in sports, players say

Victoria Azarenka was 26 years old and in the prime of her professional tennis career when she learned that she was pregnant. Azarenka had won a pair of Grand Slams, an Olympic bronze medal and had been ranked the No. 1 player in the world. But she wasn’t ready for her career to be over.

There was a time when it may have been.

For decades, it was common for women in professional tennis to either wait until the final years of their careers or even until retirement to start a family. For the few who retired in their prime to have children, as Grand Slam champion and former No. 1 Kim Clijsters did in 2007, the sport was not set up to guide them through the process of stepping away, to financially assist them through that period, or to help them eventually navigate their way back into the sport.  

After the birth of her son in late 2016, Azarenka challenged that status quo. As a players’ council representative, she positioned herself to be among the most vocal players petitioning the WTA for more structure in the rules regarding players stepping away from the game to have children.

Then, at Wimbledon in 2023, Azarenka met with The Public Investment Fund (PIF), a WTA partner and the sovereign wealth fund of Saudi Arabia, to work on aiding players who choose that route.

At the BNP Paribas Open in Indian Wells, California in early March, the WTA formally announced the PIF WTA Maternity Fund Program, a groundbreaking initiative that provides eligible WTA players with financial support and additional resources to step away from the game to have children.

“This has been my dream of a project for eight years,” Azarenka told the USA Today Network. “I’m so happy that it’s finally here.”

According to the WTA, there were 20 active players on the tour last spring who had children. Several, including Azarenka, Angelique Kerber, Caroline Wozniacki and Elina Svitolina, were toward the end of their careers. Others, such as four-time Grand Slam champion Naomi Osaka, were in the prime of their careers, which made the WTA’s maternity issue a particularly important one.

For the WTA, which has for decades been the most progressive organization in women’s professional sports, the maternity fund and enhanced player health initiatives are the next evolution. Over the last 50 years, women in professional tennis started their own tour and successfully lobbied to receive equal pay with the men in the sport, after years of inequality. Women in professional tennis, from Billie Jean King to Serena and Venus Williams to the top players in the game today, have used their voice and platform to stand for social justice.

Through the WTA’s maternity program, players will for the first time receive paid maternity leave up to 12 months and have access to grants for fertility treatments, as well as other benefits. From launch, the program will offer benefits to more than 320 eligible WTA players.

Additionally, the WTA initiative is set up to support players who are pregnant or are new parents, through the Hologic WTA Performance Health Team and Women’s Health Taskforce. These offer players physical assessments, mental health support and nutritional advice, as well as guidance on a staged return to play.

“It’s really important to see how special that is that we’ve been able to provide some stability for those situations,” said American Jessica Pegula, currently the fourth-ranked player in the world. “I think it will go a long way.”

The eligibility criteria for participation in the program includes competing in a certain number of WTA tournaments in a window of time, and receiving a special ranking, one of the existing benefits available through the WTA’s Family Focus Program that makes it easier to return to competition after having a child.

The initiative isn’t merely a form of paid leave during a pregnancy. A huge part of it is about improving the overall health of the players in the WTA, and about helping them better navigate their own health journey and, for those who choose, to have the resources to come back to the game if they desire.

“Even me, I didn’t even realize if you want to freeze your eggs and come back, you’ve got to do a lot of things,” Pegula said. “It’s not like it happens and you’re back playing. No. You have to be out for a few months. You don’t know how your body is going to react. You have to take hormones. You have to adjust for drug testing.

“It’s not like you go into a doctor’s office and you come out and you can go play in a tournament the next day,” she said.

‘A new generation’

The WTA has been a leader in women’s sports for years, helping players receive prize money equal to the men in the big tournaments, and helping them with brand development and in providing a platform to raise awareness of social issues that are important to individual players.

Prioritizing the health of the players has emerged as a top priority in the WTA in recent years.

Last month, the WTA Foundation’s Global Women’s Health Fund announced a new partnership with UNICEF to help close the women’s health gap through better health and nutrition resources for women and children worldwide. Retired Grand Slam champion Maria Sharapova has been a spokesperson for the mission.

Through its Women’s Health Taskforce, the WTA has conducted player health screenings that have proved to be life-changing for at least some of the players.

Among them is Gaby Dabrowski, a Canadian who last year won the WTA Tour Finals with doubles partner Erin Routliffe. Through education, Dabrowski said that she learned more about breast health and about how to give herself a self-exam. She learned the difference between how a lump felt versus dense breast tissue.

Through that education, Dabrowski discovered a lump last year that was later diagnosed as breast cancer.

Dabrowski’s diagnosis came after she and Routliffe reached the women’s doubles final at the Miami Open last March, and she revealed in December that she underwent two surgeries during a three-month hiatus in April, May and part of June.

“That knowledge helped when I first discovered the lump and I felt that something was abnormal,” Dabrowski, 32, told the USA Today Network. “Early detection certainly saves lives, and it saved mine.”

Access to healthcare and health education can be incredibly difficult for women who spend around 35 weeks of the year away from home, with their doctors at home based in another city or, often, country.

The WTA was created precisely to create these kinds of opportunities for women. Some players who have been through the growing pains in the sport and have fought for these opportunities for the next generation marvel at what is being created for the current generation of players.

“We came up when women were not supposed to work,” said Rosie Casals, an International Tennis Hall of Famer who lives in the Coachella Valley. “They were expected to stay home and take care of the kids. That has changed so much over the years and women now deserve to have this kind of support in today’s game, as so much has changed, for the good. We are in a new generation of sports for women.”

‘It’s not just about us’

The top-paid women athletes in the world are mostly tennis players who make millions. So, paid maternity leave won’t be as critical for the top earners in the sport.

But there’s a fairly big drop-off in prize money between the top-ranked players and the rest of the 320. For them, the financial commitment is significant.

On the LPGA Tour, Nicole Castrale, a two-time member of the U.S. Solheim Cup team, played through back pain during much of her 2011 pregnancy in order to continue making money. Players with sponsors cannot rely on that money while pregnant because such contracts often require a player to be playing in order to earn sponsorship money. That’s part of the problem, Castrale said.

Had the LPGA had a similar program to the WTA’s maternity fund, Castrale said she absolutely would have not played through her pregnancy.

“I probably would have taken that whole season off, because my back went out,” said Castrale, who has since remarried and changed her name to Nicole Ginos. “I probably would have shut it down and then started fresh in 2012.

“Giving players, whether it’s the WTA or the LPGA, the option to not play and resume where you were is great,” she said.

Azarenka and Pegula hope that the step the WTA is taking will influence other sports and leagues to take a similar step for women.

“All these other women’s sports will see what we did,” Pegula said, “and how they can make that happen in providing more opportunities in not just tennis but all women’s sports. It’s not just about us. It’s (also) about all these women playing all these other sports.”

Azarenka said she believes that the initiative creates the sort of change for women that even goes beyond sports.

For those in the WTA, it gives them the opportunity to have what Azarenka describes as “two-stage” careers, where players can leave the sport during a pregnancy while in their prime and return to have a similar kind of success afterward.

That was Azarenka’s dream all along.

“Now, with the financial support, I think a lot more players will have that cushion, the comfort cushion,” she said, “to be able to take that break. I truly believe that’s a monumental change, in sports and globally.”

Andrew John covers tennis for the USA TODAY Network. Email him at andrew.john@desertsun.com.

This article originally appeared on Palm Springs Desert Sun: WTA’s maternity fund will ‘go a long way’ for women in tennis