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Sport Minister Helen Grant called for a "battle for gender balance and fairness" yesterday after the BBC revealed the shocking disparity in prize money for men and women.
The Beeb found an average difference of 30 per cent in the 56 sports they looked at with seven-figure differences in some of the world's most popular games.
Liverpool Ladies didn't win a penny for taking the Women's Super League title this month while Premier League victors Manchester City scooped £24 million.
The World Cup and Champions League also gave two fingers to equality with prize pots of £22m v £630,000 and £8.3m v £199,000 respectively.
Cricket saw a gulf of £2.5m to £47,000 in its World Cup prize pool while a male golfer winning the US Open could expect to take home £1m compared to £452,000 for a female competitor.
Snooker was another sport with a yawning gap - Mark Selby made £300,000 when he became world champion but Reanne Evans earned just £1,500 for taking the crown.
She said: "We're basically forced to play with the men to try to make a living.
"If you're a man, there's light at the end of the tunnel. You can make a career out of the sport. In the ladies, it's like a dead end.
"It's difficult because one year I won £450 for winning the world title and I think Ronnie (O'Sullivan) won it that year and won about £250,000.
"The ladies aren't going to get any better if they haven't got any light at the end of the tunnel because they're not going to want to play."
But Grant was keen to point out that pay equality had been achieved in the majority of sports surveyed.
"In 70 per cent of sports there is parity and that's great and that's what we want. But we also want the others moving in that direction too and I feel it will happen when the full potential of women's sport is seen and realised," she told the BBC.
The FA has described the men and women's games as "polar opposites."
"The men's game is a huge multimillion-pound industry so when you compare it to the women's game, which until three or four years ago was played by amateurs, the gulf is enormous," said FA women's football head Kelly Simmons.
