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Serena Williams Makes Forbes' Most Powerful Women List for the First Time

We’ve known Serena Williams is the all-around G.O.A.T. for a while now, but Forbes is finally giving her the recognition she deserves. The magazine put her on its list of the world’s most powerful women for the first time today, citing her record-breaking career, 23 Grand Slam trophies, and $18.1 million earnings in 2017 as factors that all led to the honor. Williams is actually one of 20 newcomers on the annual list—and we think it’s about time.

After all, she’s had a whirlwind year after returning to the court following the birth of her first daughter, Olympia, and she’s emerged as a powerful voice for mothers, female athletes, and black women. She made headlines for demanding an apology after receiving a controversial series of penalties during the U.S. Open, and she’s initiated conversations about sexism, racism, and double standards in sports repeatedly throughout her career. She’s also used her platform to advocate for breast cancer awareness. On top of that long list, she’s an endlessly encouraging friend to her pal Meghan Markle.

Forbes usually bases its ranking on things like net worth, media presence, and impact within a field of interest, and it revealed that social media would play a role on the list for the first time this year. Williams deserves all of the accolades regardless of social media, but she did create a profound online presence by discussing the challenges of motherhood and inviting others to do the same. Women flooded her accounts with stories after she shared that she missed moments with her daughter while training over the summer.

In addition to Williams, Forbes also named women like Shonda Rimes, Oprah, and Beyoncé as the world’s most powerful, and German chancellor Angela Merkel holds the number one spot for the eighth year in a row. Notably, Williams is the only female athlete on the list. In November, GQ announced that Williams had also been named its Woman of the Year, so this new Forbes distinction rounds out a pretty special 2018 for our favorite tennis champion.

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Serena Williams Tops Forbes' Highest-Paid Female Athletes of 2018

As Serena Williams gears up for her next Grand Slam tournament—the U.S. Open in New York—she continues to prove that she is the greatest athlete of all time by topping Forbes‘ list of highest paid female athletes, despite only earning $62,000 in prize money over the past 12 months.

Obviously, Williams’ straight-from-tennis earnings would be down in a year that saw her take significant time off before and after the birth of her adorable daughter, Alexis Olympia Ohanian Jr. (She didn’t play competitively for 14 months.) But her bankability has long been about more than just her athletic accomplishments and she pulled in $18.1 million in endorsements and business ventures, which include her Serena clothing line.

That’s more than twice as much off-the-court as the next woman on the list, Williams’ good friend and fellow tennis star Caroline Wozniacki, who brought in $6 million in endorsements, but $7 million in prize money.

In fact, the top six athletes on the list come from the world of tennis (Venus Williams comes in at #6), which says something about how female athletes in that sport are paid, both on and off the court. However, when you take a closer look at the list of highest paid male athletes, the pay discrepancy women have become all too familiar with comes into sharp focus.

In fact, the top 100 highest paid athletes in the world, according to annual data obtained by Forbes, are men. Boxer Floyd Mayweather tops the list with $285 million. And while Williams’ recent salary may look different than it has in the past (when playing full time in 2016-17, she earned $27 million), it seems utterly ridiculous that she would be the only woman close to making the list in any given year. Perhaps the most direct comparison can be made to Roger Federer, whose earnings over the past year topped $77 million and landed him at #7 on the Forbes‘ list.

Of course, these are all enormous sums of money that most of us can only dream of—but the fundamental problem of pay inequality remains. Even for the G.O.A.T.

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