The head of The Hundred women’s competition, Beth Barrett-Wild, has described the move to provide equal prize money for the men’s and women’s competitions a “symbolic gesture.”

It was announced on Tuesday morning that the ECB intended to divide its total prize money pot of £600,000 equally between the men’s and women’s competitions for the inaugural edition of The Hundred later this year.

Despite the parity in prize money, there remains a considerable pay gap between the two tournaments. The lowest paid men in the tournament are set to take home £30,000 from the four-week competition, double the amount the highest paid women can expect to earn from The Hundred.

Excluding the Test contracted players, the average salary for a player in the men’s Hundred is a fraction above £68,500. The highest paid women in the tournament will be paid less than a quarter of that amount.

The difference winning the tournament will make on the money the average player in the women’s competition takes home is significant. £150,000 is on offer for the winning side. Presuming that sum is evenly split between the 15-woman squad, that would give each player an additional £10,000. In some cases, this would more than quadruple the money that players will take home.

If the £300,000 allocated to the women’s prize money pot was divided equally among all the players taking part, this would almost double the salaries of the lowest played players in the competition.

Speaking on The Today Programme on BBC Radio 4, Barrett-Wild explained that the announcement of equal prize money was a “symbolic gesture” that the ECB are proud of. “Equal prize money is a really great symbolic gesture of exactly how the ECB does value the men’s and the women’s games exactly the same moving forward,” she said. “It’s something that we’re very proud of. We’ve been working towards this for a long time now and I’m just really pleased that we’ve been able to make this announcement today.”

Barrett-Wild added: “Prize money and salaries are two slightly different issues and challenges. So we know that prize money is more totemic, more symbolic, that real gesture of how much we value something. I think with regards to salaries, we’re on a journey with that. We have to be realistic about where the women’s game is at the moment.”

Other than prize money, Barrett-Wild explained that the organisers of The Hundred are taking additional measures to ensure equality in the two tournaments. “Alongside things like the equal prize money, we’re also making sure we’re looking after the women’s players exactly the same as the men’s players off the field,” she said.

“Everything from travel to accommodation, that’ll be exactly the same. Overseas players will fly in on business class flights, the accommodation – the men’s and women’s teams will stay in the same standard of hotels. We’re doing a lot of really good work. We know we still have a lot to do but the ECB is absolutely committed to presenting cricket as a gender-balanced sport.”