In sport it's all about what revenue is brought into the game. Female tennis players get the same pay because they atract similar audiences. The same scale is used when "pay" is awarded to women and men other sports aswell. Bums on seats as they say.

Women's tennis has much longer rallies. Often a 3 set women's match can take as long as a 5 set men's match.

if your doing the same work you should get the same pay

Kind of fits with many areas in life where woman have advantages and privelage.

"To test a hypothesis that the differences in running performances between men and women narrow with increasing race distance, recent best running speeds (m.s-1) of 28 female ultramarathon runners over racing distances from 5 to 90 km were compared with those of male runners matched for 56 km race time, age and training. These comparisons revealed that the men ran faster than the women over 5 to 42.2 km (P < 0.01-0.05), but not in a 90-km race (2.82 +/- 0.04 vs 2.90 +/- 0.09 m.s-1). Declines in the men's and women's running speeds with increasing race distances were best fitted by Y = 2.9.exp.(-0.01.X) + 1.7 and Y = 2.1.exp.(-0.01.X) + 2.0 equations (r = -0.99). Differences between the exponential declines in the men's and women's running speeds over longer race distances were best fitted by a linear Y = -0.006 (X-66) equation (r = -0.98, P < 0.001). The negative slope and the X-axis intercept of this equation at 66 km supports the hypothesis that women ultramarathon runners have greater fatigue resistance than do equally trained men whose performances are superior up to the marathon distance." [ncbi.nlm.nih.gov]

To summarise, in ultra marathon races of 66km+, women can equal and even surpass the men; likewise in ultra swimming events and in ultra distance cycling.

Yet, professional female athletes in these sports make less money than their professional male counterparts. The thing is, in sports equal pay for equal work doesn't even enter the equation - it's all about how many people want to watch the event, which in turn brings in the sponsorship money (because sponsors, obviously, want to get their company name known to as many people as possible). Tennis is unusual in that top-level women's matches get similar viewing figures to the top-level men's, so they get equal pay.

If women in competitions were allowed to take testosterone, then the sets could be equal, unless men want to compete against women in delicate hand-eye coordination competitions.

Know nada about tennis. Should be the same for Men and Women.

It sounds like you've found an anomaly.

I need to look into this more. I can see the point about sets in a match. I am generally in favor of equal pay for equal work, but I'm not sure the work is equal in tennis.

I might be getting cynical, but when I read this I hear. "We cannot support equal rights to women unless every slight to men is addressed first!"
Maybe I'm just an asshole. I'm sorry if this is not some pretense. Just been seeing a lot of BS lately.