This weekend marks the women's FA Cup second round, and for many clubs the dream of a long cup run -- perhaps even reaching Wembley -- remains alive. At Lewes Football Club, where I serve as a director, we made a decision in 2017 to support our women's side to the same level as our men's team. We were the first club at professional or semi-professional level in the country to take that step, and we remain committed to it.

The financial prize for advancing through the FA Cup rounds exposes a clear inequality. A victory in the men's second round currently yields £79,500; the equivalent win in the women's competition is worth only £8,000 -- a difference of £71,500.

The gap is also significant in other stages: the first round difference stands at £41,750 and the third round gap is £86,500. Across the entire competitions the total prize funds contrast sharply: approximately £23.5m for the men and £6.14m for the women this season.

For many smaller clubs, prize money is not a bonus but a practical necessity. Travel, staffing, medical cover and pitch hire are real costs; in early rounds some women's clubs may actually lose money by participating. Redistributing prize funds more fairly could make the competition meaningful for teams across the pyramid.

When critics respond with "commercial reality", "revenue difference" or "it's complicated", they are invoking surface explanations rather than addressing the root decision: the FA sets the prize fund. If the FA wished, it could restructure the awards tomorrow.

Two practical points weaken that standard line. First, the FA does not collect a share of gate receipts, so attendance levels are not a direct factor in prize-fund decisions. Second, the FA has publicly committed to redistribution and to its strategy documents that promise to "deliver equal opportunities" and "build robust, high-quality competition structures".

There is precedent inside the organisation for treating men's and women's teams equally. Since 2020 the FA has paid the women's and men's England teams the same match fees and bonuses -- a principle of "equal pay for equal performance" that is already in place at St George's Park. Why should that logic not extend to the FA Cup, the country's flagship knockout competition?

Two interconnected changes would make a big difference:

Doing both would protect grassroots clubs, help more teams survive and grow, and strengthen the health of the whole game.

For several years we have campaigned for equal FA Cup prize money. This season we asked women's clubs to support a simple set of gestures on matchday: a pre-match team photo with players forming an "equal" sign with their arms, and a 21-second pause after kick-off to mark 1921, the year the FA banned women's football.

The ban lasted 50 years and cost the women's game decades of development, investment and the cultural embedding that has benefitted the men's game. The 21-second pause is not a protest against football; it is a reminder of what has been lost and what remains to be repaired.

If the FA truly believes the FA Cup is "the game's great leveller", then its finances should reflect that mission. Equal prize money is not charity -- it is recognition and reward for achievement, irrespective of gender.

We are not asking for symbolism alone. We are asking the FA to use the levers it controls to make a pragmatic change that will have immediate, positive effects across the women's game and the football pyramid as a whole.