Growing Sport, Big Bucks....Nowhere Near Perfect

While channel surfing the other day, I ran across the Kraft Nabisco Championship which is one of the four largest LPGA majors today held annually. I was watching one of my favorite players Natalie Gulbis (Sacramento Native) as well as a number of the other incredibly talented lady golfers when I found myself wondering, "How much prize money is each major worth and where do they compare to the PGA purses, is it even close?"
I searched some interesting articles and forums and found what you would expect (unfortunate but true) that the top ladies took home less prize money than the men overall. On average, the amount of money that the top place lady golfer can win on a single major event is around $1.77 million, which is still certainly is a sizeable amount. But what I further found was extremely dissapointing. If you take the total purses for the LPGA majors and pit them up against the four majors of the PGA, the ladies of the LPGA are competing for a staggering 30% of the prize money that men compete for. 30%! I realize that most sporting events are similar to this outcome but that seems very unfair.
Even with the recent growth that the LPGA has undergone this past decade, a 100% increase from 14 tournaments in 1995 to tournaments in 22 different countries alone with a 400% increase in prize money and expanded media coverage, the ladies of the LPGA along with most if not all other female sporting events face an uphill battle to close the income disparity between them and their male sporting event counterpart. Any thoughts?

D. Kirk
Kin 338I T/Th 2-3:15pm