As long as there is no money to be made by being a female cyclist unless you're absolute top of the cream of course very few people are willing to spend years of sacrifice and often even a lot of money on a dream that may or may not come true. You must be either an incredible talent or a very obsessive person.
It's a difficult situation, though. I don't agree with some people arguing that female athletes should get the same amount of money because they work just as hard. Many people in many different kind of jobs work incredibly hard and still find it difficult to make a living from that. Especially if you are in the entertainment business, it doesn't matter for instance how good a musician you are if people are just not interested in what you are doing. While Justin Bieber gets millions. Not "fair", but it's just not about fairness, it's about the market. And the truth is there aren't many people who are interested in women's cycling, for many reasons.
Also the men's business model is already very fragile and also wrong in many aspects, from disparity between teams to morally unpleasant sponsors.
There are many circles in this, where you don't know what came first, egg or hen.
Maybe it would be better for women's cycling to not try and follow the men's footsteps but to build their own business models, their own race formats and so on. Try to find interesting formats that make people watch. Maybe mountainbiking, gran fondo, gravel, adventure and endurance riding are even more the way to find new followers first who can than become interested in road races.
Or maybe it's countries like Slovenia and Colombia who have to lead the way here, with maybe more young girls watching races and interested in road cycling there. Because I think in most countries in the world it's pretty uncool, so it's not the best time to promote a "the women should have the same coverage/ prize money" agenda when it's already tough to get sponsors and venues for the men's races.