They've come a long way, baby. A handful of them, anyway.

When it comes to making money in sports, women are narrowing the gap with men, at least at the top of the pyramid. For women, the highest-paid athletes come almost exclusively from tennis and golf, where prize money and endorsement dollars flow overwhelmingly to the brightest stars.

In contrast, women's basketball and soccer are still a long way from producing the next LeBron James or David Beckham.

In Pictures: Top-Earning Female Athletes

Golfers Annika Sorenstam, Michelle Wie and Lorena Ochoa have broken into eight-figure earnings territory, a testament to the LPGA's efforts to globalize. The women's tour not only has top golfers from numerous countries (Sorenstam is from Sweden, Ochoa from Mexico, while Wie is Korean-American, born in Hawaii), but has made a point to broaden its international appeal by holding more events for players in their home markets.

"The tour has a much more international flavor to it," says David Carter of the Sports Business Group, an industry consultant.

Women's tennis has been on the upswing a lot longer, dating back to Billie Jean King's victory over Bobby Riggs in a 1973 match appropriately named "The Battle of the Sexes."

The publicity from that match led to the Women's Tennis Association's first major national television contract, just in time for Chris Evert to blossom as the first TV star of the women's game.

A little bit later, when attendance and television ratings held firm for the prime years of Martina Navratilova, Hana Mandlikova and Pam Shriver, it was clear that the public was ready for strong, hard-hitting women, and an international players roster helped ensure a wide audience.

Today, the four highest-paid female athletes in the world are from the tennis circuit: Maria Sharapova (Russia), Serena and Venus Williams (U.S.) and the newly retired Justine Henin (Belgium).

No question, the compelling rivalries of the past decade, particularly between the Williams sisters, have done a lot to overcome occasional obstacles like the 1993 stabbing of Monica Seles, the downfall (and brief return) of Jennifer Capriati and the degeneration of over-marketed Anna Kournikova into a caricature of herself.

Will women's team-sport athletes ever catch up to men? Probably not any time soon, given the lack of depth that's tied to a shorter history of organization and development.

It could happen one day, though, Carter thinks, given the consistent, incremental growth of women's sports and the national trend that has more women in charge of family budgets and entertainment spending.

"The chance does exist, especially as women's sports get more coverage in the Olympics," he says.

Olympians and WNBA stars like Diana Taurasi and Lisa Leslie don't get the same money from Nike that LeBron does, but they're in the stable. How effectively their personalities are marketed may determine whether the basketball stars of the next generation make their millions or leave the big money to tennis and golf.

© Gabriel Bouys/AFP/Getty Images

Top-Earning Women Athletes

Tennis players like Maria Sharapova and the Williams sisters top the list.

Maria Sharapova

Tennis

$26 million

There's nothing like the combination of talent and good looks to woo corporations looking to spend endorsement dollars. Sharapova's Australian Open title this year was her third Grand Slam win, along with 16 other singles titles. She's recently added Sony to an endorsement portfolio that includes Pepsi, Colgate-
Palmolive, Nike and Motorola.

© AP Photo/Francois Mori

Top-Earning Women Athletes

Tennis players like Maria Sharapova and the Williams sisters top the list.

Serena Williams

Tennis

$14 million

The younger of the storied Williams sisters, Serena has bounced back with a vengeance with three tournament wins this year, matching her combined total from 2005 to 2007. Her endorsement stable includes Hewlett-Packard, Nike and Kraft.

© AP Photo/Ana Niedringhaus

Top-Earning Women Athletes

Tennis players like Maria Sharapova and the Williams sisters top the list.

Venus Williams

Tennis

$13 million

Big sister Venus defeated Serena at this year's Wimbledon final, showing she's got plenty left in the tank. She's parlayed success on the court into her own fashion line, EleVen, a collection of casual and performance footwear and apparel.

© Mark Renders/Getty Images

Top-Earning Women Athletes

Tennis players like Maria Sharapova and the Williams sisters top the list.

Justine Henin

Tennis

$12.5 million

After ringing up $5 million in prize money during a white-hot 2007, Henin walked away from the sport this past spring, just before her 26th birthday.

© AP Photo/Claude Paris

Top-Earning Women Athletes

Tennis players like Maria Sharapova and the Williams sisters top the list.

Michelle Wie

Golf

$12 million

A limited schedule this year (injuries, college enrollment) didn't hurt Wie's endorsement career. But if the teen sensation wants to extend her deals with Nike and Sony, she'll need to spend more time on the course in 2009.

© Scott Halleran/Getty Images

Top-Earning Women Athletes

Tennis players like Maria Sharapova and the Williams sisters top the list.

Annika Sorenstam

Golf

$11 million

The Swede has racked up more career prize money than any female golfer in history--some $22 million. The eight-time player of the year has 72 LPGA tournament wins to her credit, including 10 majors. Sorenstam has announced she'll retire from the tour after the ADT Championship in November, just after she turns 38.

© Scott Halleran/Getty Images

Top-Earning Women Athletes

Tennis players like Maria Sharapova and the Williams sisters top the list.

Lorena Ochoa

Golf

$10 million

Six tournament wins so far this year have netted Ochoa $1.8 million in prize money to go along with major endorsement deals with Audi and Lacoste.

© AP Photo/Tony Gutierrez

Top-Earning Women Athletes

Tennis players like Maria Sharapova and the Williams sisters top the list.

Danica Patrick

Auto Racing

$7 million

Patrick's Indy series win in April should set her up for more riches to come, provided she avoids becoming a one-hit wonder.

© AP Photo/Dita Alangkara

Top-Earning Women Athletes

Tennis players like Maria Sharapova and the Williams sisters top the list.

Ana Ivanovic

Tennis

$6.5 million

The 20-year-old Serb has shot up to No. 1 in the world after winning the 2008 French Open. She counts Adidas, Yonex (rackets) and Juice Plus among her major endorsements.

© AP Photo/Sue Ogrocki

Top-Earning Women Athletes

Tennis players like Maria Sharapova and the Williams sisters top the list.

Paula Creamer

Golf

$6 million

Creamer's victory in the 2005 Sybase Classic made her, at 18, the youngest LPGA event winner in 53 years. She's signed on with Adidas, NEC and Taylor Made.

After quickly disarming and incapacitating your pursuers, you clamber up some stairs and burst out onto a sun-drenched rooftop. Running full-tilt to the lip of the roof, you leap, roll to your feet and vault over air ducts before sliding to safety beneath a descending steel gate a few buildings away. Speedily threading your way through such obstacles is essential for survival as a lone runner against an entire police force that's trying to prevent you from discovering the truth behind a political assassination.

Welcome to "Mirror's Edge," Electronic Arts' (nasdaq: ERTS - news - people ) new parkour-inspired action game landing in stores Tuesday. What's unique about the game--beyond its use of the first-person vantage point, which is usually reserved for shooters--is that the main character is a woman.

The games industry has long catered to the core 18- to 34-year-old male demographic, so game developers often choose burly space marines instead of petite heroines as protagonists. But as the general audience of games expands--thanks to devices like the Nintendo (other-otc: NTDOY.PK - news - people ) Wii--it calls into question why female heroines are so under-represented in games.

In Pictures: Top 10 Games Starring Female Characters

According to the Entertainment Software Association, 40% of all game players are female, and nearly 30% of all console game players are women. But only 3% of games appearing on the current crop of Microsoft (nasdaq: MSFT - news - people ), Nintendo and Sony (nyse: SNE - news - people ) consoles star female characters, according to the research firm Electronic Entertainment Design and Research. Men fill the lead role in 46% of titles created for the latest consoles. The remaining games feature either customizable characters (normally found in role-playing games) or don't feature a lead character (such as the puzzle game "Tetris").

The industry is not necessarily opposed to putting females in games--some of gaming's most iconic leads are women. Bounty hunter Samus Aran made waves when it was revealed at the end of the first "Metroid" game that the person behind the suit was female. Lara Croft, the female adventurer modeled after Indiana Jones, has been raiding tombs since the late '90s. And there are a host of other games like Ubisoft's "Beyond Good & Evil" and Sony's "Heavenly Sword" that star strong female characters. Still, these heroines are vastly out-numbered by their male counterparts and, historically, developers have exploited female characters for their sex appeal.

That's why EA's decision to put the sleek and athletic Faith in the leading role of "Mirror's Edge" is so unique. "I find it's wearing a bit thin and [is] kind of childish," Owen O'Brien, the game's senior producer, says about the typical portrayal of gals in games. "I wanted to create an action hero who happened to be female--but could just as easily have been male--who wasn't trading on the fact that she was a sexual being. I was trying to create a character that was aspirational but attainable...[without] gravity-defying breasts."

Besides, says O' Brien, Faith fits perfectly into the role of a hunted runner far better than a man ever would. If she were male, he says, players would have immediately entered shooter mode--hunting for bigger guns and better armor--instead of relying on Faith's speed and agility to disarm or dodge opponents.

In the action genre that "Mirror's Edge" falls into, only 3% of titles released during this console cycle starred females. Men helm 51% of action games. Male characters also drive 73% of shooters while women star in a mere 1% of the games. The only genre where women have the upper hand is in Sims-like games where they star in 14% of the games versus 5% featuring men.

See chart for a full genre breakout

The only market where women are represented with the same frequency as men is in the casual games space. "The [casual] industry has leaned toward female characters," says Jessica Rogers, marketing director of Nickelodeon's Kids and Family Games Group. "It has a lot to do with the audience being predominately women."

With respect to the industry at large, O'Brien has a "gut feeling" that it's moving toward equal representation. "There are more girls playing games, but there's still a long way to go," he says.

Sarah Hoeksma, group marketing director at "Tomb Raider" publisher Eidos, says the ratio of female to male leads in gaming overall is already increasing. "A number of top publishers are now releasing games with leading female characters in games designed for gamers rather than the casual market," Hoeksma said in an e-mail. "If consumers show there is a demand for these characters, then the industry will continue to invest in the development of more female leads."

10. Rumble Roses XX

"Rumble Roses" is unapologetic in touting this wrestling game's "visual 'enhancements'"--it renders scantily clad women entangled in suplexes. If the female wrestlers--dressed up as cowgirls, schoolgirls and nurses--weren't scintillating in their barely there apparel, they also fight with bared breasts.

9. Petz: Horsez 2

The "Petz" franchise, alongside the "Imagine" line, is one of Ubisoft's core revenue generators in its Games for Everyone initiative, which generated some 25% of the companies revenues in 2007. The "Petz" games give players a virtual animal to dutifully play, train and groom. Horses, of course, appeal primarily to wee lasses, so it's of little surprise that "Horsez" stars a young female rider who gets to raise and breed steeds and participate in competitions.