So I was disconcerted to arrive at the Australian Open last week and recognise almost none of the women playing. With Serena and Venus out of the tournament, I sat in the stands googling names like Suarez Navarro, Kumkhum and Svitolina. At first I felt guilty – why was I able to wax lyrical and personal about Kyrgios (why did I even know that his mother still did his laundry in the basement of his hotel) yet not even know the name of the world's number-two female player? Why was I secretly hoping that the women's game would end quickly so that I'd definitely see Nadal play Schwartzman?

With women currently scheduled to play at either 11 in the morning or midnight it's no wonder that I, or anyone in Australia, had little regard for women's tennis. The scheduling, that is clearly dictated by the interests of Channel Seven, has meant that we know absolutely nothing about any of them. For anyone who works a 9-5 job you will come home to the last of the day matches, which is almost always men, or to the beginning of the night match at 7pm, which, with the exception of two matches, has been men. It's not just outright sexist, it's also often tedious: a game of 200km/h serves is a yawn fest compared to the strategy, skill, intelligence and power of women's tennis.

Channel Seven and the Australian Open organisers would no doubt argue that people are just not interested in women's tennis, that it simply doesn't get the same ratings as men's. And they're probably right. But the argument is circuitous. It's hard to be interested in players you've never heard of and tennis, more than any other sport, is a game of character. We love Kyrgios because he behaves like an inarticulate Hamlet muttering darkly and incoherently after each winner. We love Federer because we read inner-grace and aristocratic reserve into his silken backhands. We love them because the media lets us love them. It reports on them, narrativises them and packages them up for our collective delectation. Female players, on the other hand, are completely ignored.

This is no hyperbole. Did you notice how the SMH's Sports Pages reported on Australian Ash Barty on the day that she won her match? No? Neither did I. That's because the entire back page that day was taken up by Alex de Minaur – the latest top Aussie bloke in a white male lineage stretching from Cash to Rafter to Hewitt – who LOST. Yup. Journalists would prefer to report on an un-seeded Australian male player who loses rather than the 20th-best female player in the world WHO WINS. In fact, one of the first stories that appears when you Google Barty reports on her apologising to Federer for making him wait when her game went overtime. (Oh, if only #sorrynotsorry wasn't such an irritating liberal feminist slogan…)

Of course the appalling coverage of the Australian Open is just the tip of the iceberg. We could also talk about how ridiculous it is that elite female athletes are only permitted to play three sets when the men play five; we could discuss the porny dresses they're given to wear by their sponsors, and how media attention is generally dependent upon their perceived attractiveness. Oh, and let's not forget the misogynistic U ltratune advertisements that run throughout the season.