ABSTRACT
Following the gains for various identity-based social movements during the era of the Joiners cohort, corporatization was becoming entrenched across society during the Sustainers cohort, causing individualization through competitiveness for supposedly limited resources. Politically, it seems, the Sustainers cohort is a generation of malaise. Women’s professional tennis has, by this time, steadily increasing prize money and an increasing number of tournaments offered, so the Founders cohort’s primary issue has been realized. Also, at this point, women’s tennis has recovered and has incorporated different understandings of the identity politics from the Joiners cohort. The Sustainers cohort is marked by heightened individualism and a disavowal of the history and struggles in women’s tennis. The primary issues identified in this chapter are the corporatization and restructuring of the WTA and the creation and enforcement of feminine ideals for female players. As the WTA crafted itself more and more into a corporate model, players jockeyed for position within this hierarchical structure, disregarding community and collective action.
