Prabashni Dherman

Women in sport whether it’s as a supporter or an athlete or a journalist are treated as sub-par even as professionals.There are very few men in the world who want to talk or will talk about changing that. Women are fighting this battle but we obviously can’t be too vocal about it

you should know it’s bad all the way around. When Serena stood up for herself it was telling who thought she was being a bully and a sore loser and didn’t think the rules applied to her and who saw it as the umpire inserting his male authority into the match just because he could

worked extremely hard to overcome barriers both seen and unseen to be at the summit. If they are still subjected to all this hate and suspicion after succeeding as they have you cannot question why people are angry with how Serena was treated. If it’s that bad at the top

When you see incredible athletes like Caster and Serena subjected to the hateful talk and the testing and scrutiny of their womanhood. The ‘rules’ that get made and changed just for and because of them; it angers me greatly because they are warriors at the top of their sport who

sexist or racist. We can’t change it if we can’t even call it out and talk about it when we see it. You shouldn’t be taking individual responsibility for it if someone wants to discuss it but you should be able to admit it’s there and someone is disadvantaged because of it.

Conversations about sexism & racism are uncomfortable for men & white people because they feel like they must defend themselves & make it clear firstly & fore mostly that they are not those things. The value in the conversation is then lost since it became about them not being

That extends to life in general I think. People don’t take time to consider other people’s life experiences and when suddenly that explodes into your orbit you’re looking at it from your vantage point, colouring it in with your experience in similar situations to make sense of it

Novak doesn’t take time out of his day or life to consider how Serena gets treated or how women in tennis get treated differently to him. Why would he? It doesn’t affect him. Why would he think they get treated differently or that there was merit in debating or talking about it

They asked Novak about Serena and the umpire & part of his response was this “Men and women are treated in this way or the other way depending on the situation. It’s hard to generalise things. I don’t see it’s necessary really to debate that.” It just got me thinking