The organisers of the Eneco Tour have been heavily touting their new formula for holding men's and women's races at the same time on some days, even going so far as intermingling the men and women starters during the prologue on Tuesday.
However, their focus on equity hasn't made its way to the prize purse, a point that sprint leader Charlotte Kool (Fenix-Premier Tech) pointed out on Instagram. She posted an image of the prize list, which shows the women are racing for a total of €17,205 while the men's purse is €63,465.
"I'm curious if women get a discount at @eneco for energy? Prologue: Same start time, same distance, same energy," Kool wrote in the post.
While men's prologue winner Jakob Söderqvist (Lidl-Trek) pocketed €1,490 for his effort, women's winner Lieke Nooijen (Visma-Lease a Bike) earned just €220. Tim Merlier (Soudal-Quickstep) will take home €3,060 for winning the sprint on stage 1, while Sandrine Tas (Lotto Intermarché) gained just €370.
Speaking to In de Leiderstrui, Kool expanded, saying, "It's not about the money for us; that is just a small bonus. It's more about the principle, that it's a bit strange.
"It was a bit of a joke," she said of her post. "Because it is of course a bit skewed that, as the Eneco Tour, you promote that men and women are on equal footing, and then there is such a difference in prize money."
The fight for equal prize purses for men and women goes back decades. The UCI brought prize parity for their various world championships in 2013, but getting the rest of the calendar on board has been a long, hard slog.
In 2015, Helen Wyman pointed out a disparity in the UCI Cyclo-cross World Cups, where women raced for 20% of what men got.
During the 2020 season, Flanders Classics, organisers of the Tour of Flanders and other races, launched an initiative called 'Closing the Gap' to bring more parity to broadcast coverage and prize money. The Tour of Flanders awarded equal prizes in 2022, and Flanders Classics extended that to five other races in 2023.
But events like the Tour de France still give women a tenth of what the men earn, so the fight is not over yet.
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