Ann Budge is targeting parity for the women's team at Tynecastle as one of her remaining objectives before she retires as Hearts' chair.

"We are trying to give the women the same as the men," Budge told BBC Scotland's Behind the Goals podcast.

"It is a matter of trying to get to the point where there is equality."

Hearts are fourth in the SWPL with nine wins from 17 matches, a step up on their eighth-place finish last season and a significant improvement from the campaign before that when they won just two of their 21 matches in their debut campaign in the top flight.

Budge wants to see fixture planning that would permit the men's and women's teams to share access to the Tynecastle pitch.

The Capital Cup will be a step towards that, when Hearts host Hibernian in the league on 26 February. About 8,000 free tickets have been snapped up so far and Budge hopes the attendance can move in to five figures.

The Hearts chair, who signed over her shares to the Foundation of Hearts fans' group in August 2021, reflected on being approached to take on the women's team while tackling the club's general financial mess.

"I said, 'What? A women's team as well as everything else we're trying to sort out?'

"'OK, we will do anything we can to help with the practicalities of it but I can't fund the whole operation. As soon as we can, we'll do it.'

"So we had a loose connection and then I thought we could do something more tangible."

Budge began by integrating the girls' teams into the academy, which she says "had been underfunded for a long time", before bringing the women's set-up in-house during the Covid-19 outbreak.

Budge insists the women's team "deserve the same" access to support facilities as Robbie Neilson's men's squad and, in terms of the women playing at Tynecastle, she added: "Of course it should happen. I would love to see them both playing here.

"It's a matter of getting the fixtures sorted to allow it to happen. It will take a wee while but the principle should be the same."

The Hearts chair says she "will retire at some point" but claims "we still have so much further to go".

"I set out to work with the supporters to achieve something," she said. "They've got their shares, I've got the money back from the supporters. But it's not finished yet. Apart from the infrastructure, which I'd really like to get finished, [there's] proving that a fairly large football club can be fan owned and successful."

Budge looks likely to be at the helm until the hotel in the new stand opens, and to be part of the club's 150th anniversary celebrations next year.

She says the men's team reaching the group stage of the Europa Conference League allowed for a "slackening of the purse strings" and that consistent group stage European football must be the target, via third place in the Scottish Premiership or a Scottish Cup triumph.

Another source of contentment is the progress Spain's Eva Olid is making as manager of the women's team.

"Eva's quite a remarkable young woman," said Budge. "She's so focused; she's got this winning mentality. She's done a great job.

"When her CV came in, she was kind of head and shoulders above the other applicants. I liked the idea that it was a woman managing the women's team."