Only in the past year has it become mandatory for women at an elite level of cycling to be paid a salary and it's less than beginning male pros who are just sta

Only in the past year has it become mandatory for women at an elite level of cycling to be paid a salary and it's less than beginning male pros who are just starting out. Probably less than a dozen women make over five figures a year. 95% of the advertising money in cycling is generated from the men's Tour de France. The organization that runs the Tour de France and a few other races, these are mostly for men with sometimes a day or two set aside for women's races. All the money gets generated by the men's events, gets poured back into creating men's events. For a different type of story, we could look at women's tennis. The cigarette brand Virginia Slims became the sponsor, the sport was televised, and the women started earning ballpark what the men were at least in prize money back in the 70's. It helped that there were few women at the top of tennis and they organized together. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virginia_Slims_Circuit https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virginia_Slims_Circuit There are a few superstars in cycling but the farm system or whatever you want to call it is full of potential riders to replace the current ones so it's too easy to get strike breakers if cyclists tried to do the same thing.