Thirteen months after the WTA launched the first paid maternity scheme in women’s professional sport, two of the visible markers are unmistakable: a first-of-its-kind top-10 featuring two mothers, and Ons Jabeur expecting her first child after publicly thanking the programme for making it possible.
What the WTA has not yet disclosed is the one number that would settle the question of impact — how many of the more than 320 eligible players have actually drawn down their benefits.
The PIF WTA Maternity Fund Program was announced at Indian Wells on 6 March 2025, backed by Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund. It offers eligible players up to 12 months of paid maternity leave, two months of parental leave for partner pregnancy, surrogacy or adoption, and grants for fertility procedures including egg and embryo freezing and IVF.
The scheme was made retroactive to 1 January 2025, and players are not required to repay funds if they choose not to return to competition.
A top-10 milestone
The clearest on-court signal of the shift came in February, when Belinda Bencic rose to No. 9 and Elina Svitolina to No. 10 — the first time in WTA history that two mothers have held top-10 positions simultaneously.
WTA CEO Portia Archer called it an incredible moment for tennis and for women’s sport. Both players used the tour’s special ranking rule, the older mechanism the PIF fund now sits alongside, to rebuild their rankings after pregnancy.
Bencic, who gave birth to her daughter Bella in April 2024 and began her comeback six months later, began 2025 ranked 421 and ended the year inside the top 10. She has since reached three finals on her return and argued that the conversation around mothers on tour needs to shift from novelty to performance.
Azarenka’s “beginning” line under test
At launch, Victoria Azarenka — the WTA Players’ Council representative who had pushed the scheme for close to eight years — described the programme as “the beginning of a meaningful shift.” Measured against the regulatory record since, the line has held up.
In September 2025, the WTA introduced a Fertility Protection Special Entry Ranking Rule, allowing players to step away for egg or embryo freezing and return with a protected ranking valid for up to three tournaments.
The rule plugged a gap the original maternity fund did not address, extending the programme’s logic from post-birth return to pre-pregnancy planning.
Jabeur: the highest-profile test case
The most prominent player to publicly credit the programme is Ons Jabeur. The three-time Grand Slam finalist announced in November that she was expecting a baby boy in April, and directly thanked PIF and the WTA for the fund, calling it “unbelievable.”
Jabeur, who had once spoken of wanting to win a major before starting a family, framed the decision this time without that condition attached. Her return, whenever it comes, will be the programme’s most-watched use case.
She is not alone among high-profile players navigating the family question. American world No. 11 Danielle Collins, who had planned to retire in late 2024 to try for a child, has continued on tour after an endometriosis diagnosis complicated those plans and has spoken publicly about her fertility journey.
The missing number
What the WTA has not released is the operational data: how many of the 320-plus eligible players have actually accessed paid leave, fertility grants or parental benefits in the programme’s first year. Payment amounts are undisclosed by design and paid monthly.
The older ranking-protection scheme, introduced in 2019, took six years to accumulate 50 beneficiaries, suggesting uptake numbers may take time to become meaningful.
For now, the anniversary reads less like a finished story than a first chapter — with the second year set to test whether the fund delivers a generation of mid-career mothers rather than end-of-career ones.
