Maternity decline in female tennis is already a reality. And the person who has led this pioneer initiative was one of the most tennis players top At the beginning of the last decade: Victoria Azárenka, the former worldwide number who lost her status and position in the circuit for wanting to be a mother.
In 2012, the tennis player reached the glory of her sport. Became the First Belarusian to win a Grand Slam in Individualsafter an intense ending against María Sharapova in the Australian Open. It became the number one for more than fifty weeks and also shone in the London Olympics with two medals, reaching glory for the first time for your country in tennis in an Olympic appointment.
However, in 2016 he fulfilled one of his dreams and his career stopped completely. Azárenka became a mother at the end of that year and, in addition to the legal battle he freed with his son’s father for custody, he was made Impossible to return to the elite of high performance without facilities that allowed him to live from sport and take care of his family.
The tennis player had no choice but to start from scratch. But why? For current regulations until 2018, it was collected that every person who did not dispute matches would lose the accumulated points. Consequently, I would get off the wta rankingwhich is what allows you to play certain important tournaments and thus add more points to climb in the top. In addition, they had no right to economic remuneration or any help to combine their professional career with the family. Until now.
Victoria Azárenka was clear that she would not allow any partner of the tennis circuit to relive the hard experience she lived in the first person. She was going to advocate because her sport was increasingly inclusive with future mothers And I was going to do it from within. Therefore, he began to design a detailed plan and, after many years of struggle, the first maternity leave in tennis has just been approved.
“This milestone marks the beginning of a transcendental change on how we support women in tennisworking to make athletes easier to combine their career and their aspirations to create a family, “said the player after the entry into force of the project.
It has also stressed that kind of legacy that they will leave for future athletes: “Creating guarantee programs such as this agreement has always been a personal objective for me, and I am excited to see the lasting impact that it will have for the next generations of tennis players who will come.”
Necessary advances on motherhood in sport
This initiative, designed by the WTA players council, is historical for all female sportsince before, an integral set of motherhood benefits had been offered to autonomous athletes. Called as New Maternity Fund Fip WTA (Thanks to the support of the Public Investment Fund for Saudi Arabia), will provide eligible players for a payment of up to twelve months and access to fertility treatments, facilitating the possibility of forming or expanding their families.
All these measures are added to the current initiative since 2018 that allows women to stop their career for pregnancy, return to the circuit with a kind of protected rankingin which an average of how it was located before motherhood is performed and gives the possibility of playing twelve tournaments in a period of three years. However, like the compensation that injured tennis players have, they exclude the possibility of being standard and the protection will end once they have played that number of competitions.
#tennis #player #sacrificed #career #companions #mothers #losing
