Daria Kasatkina has been a pretty vocal player in recent years about many topics, and she chimed in on the equal prize money debate.
For months now, we've seen an ongoing debate about the prize money equality issue. Most of the time, men and women don't earn the same amount in tennis, which many feel is unfair. There are valid points for both sides, with various tennis players taking various stances.
Years ago Rafael Nadal made a comment which created headlines by comparing the situation to how women earn more than men in modelling.
Most players today would support equal prize money as notable players like Denis Shapovalov advocate for it. WTA stars are also very loud in their calls for equal prize money, which shouldn't be a huge surprise.
Kasatkina also favours more money for women; however, her approach is a bit different. She doesn't see men's sports as a competing entity and simply wants better terms for women because men's and women's sports are not the same and will never be the same.
Comparing men's and women's sports makes no sense at all. I don't understand why we're doing it, we're not competing with each other. I think the topic of equal prize money was not invented by tennis players. We realise that this is impossible nowadays.
We want our prize money to increase. And it's absolutely normal when you work and you want the best, you want to be paid more. Especially when you know that the capacity to pay is there. We know a little bit more than others, so we're not satisfied. That's what we're fighting for.
There has been a growing sentiment that women pushing for better terms for themselves will hurt men's sports, so some players are against equal pay. For Kasatkina, that's not the case at all; she doesn't want to take money away from men.
No one wants to take men's money away from them. We don't want to sit with what we have because it's not enough. The top-50 WTA are doing well, the rest are just surviving. ATP has a better situation with that. Even if we look at the prize money at WTA 250 or WTA 125, it's absurd. After all the taxes and expenses, there's nothing to live on.