The Womens Tour love to piggyback on the Mens Tour

We're seeing more and more of these joint events these days where the womens and mens tournaments take place simultaneously. The current Madrid event is one of these and from 2011 the Rome event - which this year saw the ATP and WTA events held separately - will also be a joint tournament.
 
 
Now seeing the pitiful crowds in Rome last week for the womens event its not hard to see why the WTA are pushing for more joint tournaments. The latter stages of the mens tournament were all sold out whereas the best match of the WTA event - the womens semi final between Williams and Jankovic - was played to a stadium about a third full.
 
 
These womens tour events just simply do not attract anywhere near the level of interest that the mens events do. Prize money is far less as a result. And the result of the prize money being less is that very often the top players are either absent or put in lacklustre performances. So the issue just gets worse.
 
 
 
When you see these discrepancies in crowds at tour level then i think the women are very fortunate that they now get equal prize money at all the Grand Slams. They probably cant believe their luck.
 
 
I often wonder if they held separate Grand Slam events for men and women which would attract the greater crowds? Actually i dont wonder that because i know the answer: the mens event and probably by a factor of 3 or 4.