Women's football is growing in popularity and in participation. It is now the third largest team sport in the UK, above both codes of rugby. This summer sees The FA Women's Cup final held at Wembley Stadium for the first time ever. The BBC will cover yet more women's football as they expand their coverage to include The FA Women's Premier League from the 2015/16 season. With the BBC and BT Sport covering more live women's games than ever before. The success of the England team in this summer's World Cup will bring more money into the women's game, and new FA Women's Cup sponsors SSE will also inject a bit of cash, The FA have not announced any plans to invest more money directly into the game. They instead, are putting more into grassroots women's football. They should, of course, do this but the top levels also need investment. Despite growing investment, mostly from commercial sponsorships and coverage rights, there is still barely a fraction of the money in the men's game.

The winners of this season's FA Cup Arsenal received £1.8million, with runners-up ASton Villa cashing £900k. The total prize fund for The FA Women's Cup is just £68,700, more than 220 times less than the male equivalent. Both The FA Trophy, and Vase pay out more.

I want to call on The FA to increase financial investment to a minimum of £1million total prize fund for The FA Women's Cup, around the same level as the non-league cup (The FA Trophy) to ensure proper development of women's football.