ABSTRACTIn this paper, we provide a normative analysis of the Women’s Tennis Association revised policy on maternity leave, which is regulated by its special ranking rule. To do so, we first explore how the revised policy functions when probed in relation to the nature of competitive sport. Then, we examine the revised policy through the lens of the literature on maternity discrimination. We argue that, when compared to its previous formulation, the revised special ranking rule is morally defensible because it (...) better protects female players’ interest in being able to combine their professional careers and their personal lives. However, we also identify several pronounced vulnerabilities and criticisms to the revised policy. (shrink)

Sports tournaments provide a procedure for producing a champion and ranking the contestants based on game results. As such, tournaments mirror aggregation methods in social choice theory, where diverse individual preferences are put together to form an overall social preference. This connection allows us a novel way of conceptualizing sports tournaments, their results, and significance. I argue that there are genuine intransitive dominance relationships in sports, that social choice theory provides a framework for understanding rankings in such situations and that (...) these considerations provide a new reason to endorse championship pluralism. (shrink)