The tennis Grand Slam season has swung around again - with a reminder of one of the crowning achievements for women's sport as the girls happily flaunt the fact that they now receive equal prize money to the men.

It was a long, arduous and admirable struggle spearheaded by Billie Jean King, who led the charge in the late 1970s to give women players an equal share of  tournament purses.

The two pro organisations -- the men's ATP and women's WTA -- mostly organise their own tournaments and as such they are exclusively for one sex or the other. Only the four Grand Slams and a very few other events have men and women playing alongside each other -- and that is when the discrepancy is noticeable.

Wimbledon is now the only one of the four Slams where the prize money is not equal, but even at the bastion of tennis tradition the gap has been closing over the years. Nevertheless, those who argue that Justine Henin-Hardenne, Amelie Mauresmo and Anna Sharapova don't deserve to be remunerated equally have a valid argument when they state clearly that women play only best of three sets while men play best-of-five.

You might think that at the other three Slams the women should also play best of five in order to justify, at least formally, their equal pay -- but this has not happened for a variety of reasons. It certainly is not because women are supposedly weaker, have less stamina and are are unable to keep up their level of play for as long as the men.

Actually, the Grand Slam tournament organisers are probably very happy that they don't have a field of 128 women adding to their burden by playing best-of-five-set matches because it would make an already-tight schdule even more difficult to complete. And at Wimbledon the wear and tear on the grass courts would probably make them unplayable well before the end of the fortnight.

There has also been an argument against women receiving equal pay because only a small number of players are of a high-enough standard and there are far too many one-sided encounters which do not give spectators "value for money".

This argument might have been justified to some extent until four or five years ago when the women's seedings often went to form and the real action began in the quarter or semi-final stages. The rest of the field yielded tamely to the better players in matches which were almost a formalty.

Now the number of top players has increased dramatically and a much larger group of women players vie for titles with one-sided results far reduced. If almost anybody in the men's top 100 has a chance of beating anybody else in that group, among the women this is probably now true for the top 30 to 50, where once it was only in the top 10.

But while most of the tournaments now pay out equal amounts to men and women, I think the shoe is on the other foot. I feel women have not made a strong enough stand in demanding that they should also play best-of-five-set matches (at tournaments where men play best of five) to justify their earnings.

It really does have to be that simple. If  the likes of Henin-Hardenne, Mauresmo and Sharapova want the same money, then they should work equally as hard. That is the only criterion by which they can justify their pay and silence critics who say that they are overpaid for their work.

Should women get equal prize money to men at the Grand Slams? Send your comments to Sportingo.com.