More Than 5 Decades After Battle of the Sexes Victory, Billie Jean King Is Still Fighting for Equality

“If I had not played tennis, I would have tried to be the President of the United States,” Billie Jean King tells me during a Zoom discussion on a Tuesday afternoon. “I want girls to believe in themselves. I want people to believe in themselves.”

Throughout her illustrious career as a professional tennis player, King claimed 39 Grand Slam singles titles (including 20 total titles at Wimbledon and 13 at the U.S. Open) and, in 1971, became the first female athlete to ever earn over $100,000 in a single season. She was instrumental in the founding of the Women’s Tennis Association (WTA) two years later, followed by the creation of the Billie Jean King Foundation, which looks to create equity in sports through education and activism, in 2014.

Though she retired from professional competition in 1984, King continues to be a changemaker in women’s sports. Today, she is a co-founder and advisory board member of the Professional Women’s Hockey League (PWHL) and cohosts Welcome to the Party, a women’s sports podcast, alongside two-time Olympic gold medalist Abby Wambach and National Soccer Hall of Fame inductee Julie Foudy.

Despite all of these master class achievements that have pushed the needle for equality in women’s sports for the last five decades, King remains incredibly modest and focused on future progress, rather than harping on her own achievements.

“I don’t expect you to,” King humbly states after asking me if I’ve heard of her historic “Battle of the Sexes” tennis match, which took place at the Houston Astrodome on Sept. 20, 1973. In defeating Bobby Riggs in straight sets (6-4, 6-3, 6-3), King, who was 29 at the time to Riggs’s 55, secured a victory that would ultimately be a revolutionary advancement for women in sport.

Billie Jean King following the “Battle of the Sexes” victory | Bettmann/Getty Images

In proving the notion that female athletes were somehow inferior to their male counterparts wrong, King’s victory, in conjunction with the passage of Title IX, a federal law enacted in June 1972 that prohibits discrimination in schools based on sex, set the stage for female athletes to thrive. The same year King won the “Battle of the Sexes,” the U.S. Open became the first Grand Slam tournament to offer equal prize money to both men and women.

“It did help cement the fact that girls deserve this,” King says breezily of the historic match. “We deserve Title IX, we deserve to be in sports. We never had a scholarship until ’74 with Ann Meyers, [who] got the first basketball Title IX scholarship for four years at UCLA. It did start things. [Women] couldn’t get a credit card on our own, and then we soon thereafter did. What that match did is [it] woke everybody up.”

Following the “Battle of the Sexes” match, King says men would come up to her in tears, thanking her for opening their eyes to the power of equality. She reflects upon meeting former U.S. President Barack Obama for the first time, when he told her that watching her match against Riggs while he was a 12-year-old boy informed how he ultimately chose to raise his two girls, Sasha and Malia.

When asked about how much of a cultural impact she has had in the fight for equality over the years, King simply replies, “I don’t think about that, actually.” Instead of focusing on her own personal achievements, King is constantly looking ahead to the success of future generations. “I think about what are we going to do now and tomorrow. We have to keep going. Every human being’s gotta fight for equality. We don’t understand inclusion if we’ve never been excluded.”

Billie Jean King | Andrew Lipovsky/Getty Images

As part of her advocacy work to bolster future generations of athletes, King has partnered with Dove for the second year in a row as a member of the brand’s Body Confidence Collective in order to help young women thrive while feeling confident in sports. While Dove Self-Esteem Project’s research has found that 45% of girls drop out of sports due to low body confidence, King hopes to equip young girls with the self-confidence they need to thrive.

“Girls are taught we’re never quite good enough, you know, the way we look, the way we are,” King says, noting that it’s important for parents and coaches to do their part. “ ... As long as we get [young girls] to love themselves, they'll have the best life possible. It’s about their mental, emotional and physical health. And that's what Dove’s helping with. If you can get the girl to have confidence, then [she’s] got a chance in life.”

An icon and a trailblazer in every sense of the word, King can appreciate the strides made toward equality while also acknowledging the work that still lies ahead.

“There so much to go, but we’ve gone forward,” she says. “I think women’s sports actually has helped a lot, because we’re very visible. I think we touched a lot of hearts and minds. I think we can help change the world be a better place, and I think we can help women believe in themselves.”

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