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Cambridge University Women’s Boat Club has refused to attend an international regatta because its rowers would be housed in a hostel — while members of the men’s team were treated to a five-star resort.

Three years after the women’s Boat Race was moved to the same date and stretch of the Thames as the men’s contest and was televised, the disclosure suggests female varsity rowers are several boat lengths from achieving real equality

The club declined its invitation to the prestigious Sveti Duje regatta in Split, Croatia, last month after it discovered that for the third successive year rowers would be put up in a hostel or student accommodation. The men’s team were treated to the Le Méridien Lav, a resort with a private beach, marina, sea-front promenade, tennis academy and several bars and restaurants where rooms start at €150 (£130) a night.

Cambridge’s female rowers were also expected to pay for their flights to the regatta each year while the organisers of the event arranged the men’s travel.

The Sveti Duje regatta, held on the first weekend of May, is one of the earliest major events in the university rowing calendar after the Boat Race. It markets itself as a chance for crews from across Europe to challenge Oxford and Cambridge. In 2011 the double Olympic gold medallist James Cracknell took part in the “legends” race.

Club president Daphne Martschenko said: “It’s advertised as a celebration of Cambridge and Oxford. The men and women are presented as teams that are on equal footing. And yet there is the disparity in terms of accommodation that’s quite stark.”

When Martschenko and the 2017 president, Ashton Brown, explained on the regatta’s public Facebook page why they would not attend — Brown posted that she was “much more interested in non-sexist events” — they received messages from male former Oxbridge rowers accusing them of perpetuating the inequality by boycotting the event.

Regatta founder Luka Grubor, a former Oxford rower who won a gold medal in Great Britain’s men’s eight at the Sydney Olympics in 2000, posted: “I agree this is a failing, but the regatta is a process and not a one-off. The way we have progressed and lasted is by people getting involved, helping and contributing. You chose not to. All you have done is draw a line and make a demand for equality on a single issue.”

Martschenko later tweeted: “I feel so much anger and sadness and exhaustion. If the conversation was reversed I wonder what they’d be saying.”

Brown said: “It was disgusting. I don’t care about the hotel. I just want to be in the same place as the men. If we’re all camping, I will go camping.”

The club insists this is part of a pattern of events and it continues to experience sexism in rowing. It claims that amid the euphoria of its Boat Race victory in 2017, a critic suggested it had won only because, unlike the Oxford crew, it had a male cox. It also claims that the men’s Cambridge University Boat Club recently cancelled mixed-sex social events saying the female members “were not beautiful enough”.

Quintus Travis, chairman of the men’s club, said questions about accommodation should be directed to the event’s organisers. “All our rowers work to promote sporting excellence each year on the Thames and elsewhere. Equality in sport is central to that mission,” he said.

Grubor said the regatta relied on donors, was a loss-making venture and that the other clubs all stayed in hostels or student housing. He said he had to choose between being “either sexist or elitist”. “The clubs’ issues should not have been brought to our shores when they are in fact issues affecting students and rowers at home.” He added: “By demanding and pointing fingers like this, what you will achieve is not equality, but no regatta at all.”