Paris 2024: The First Gender Equal Olympics?
Paris 2024 marks the first year in history that there has been a 50-50 equal split in male and female athletes at the Olympic Games. Despite its long and prestigious history, women were only allowed to start competing in 1900, and it wasn’t until London 2012 when women could compete in ALL sports, with boxing being the last to allow female competitors (go figure).
It took 124 years, generations of brilliant female pioneers, male allies and relentless campaigning, but here we are: the first gender equal Olympic Games.
But is it really?
Whilst no one at Our Streets Now is taking away from the incredible milestone that is equal male/female representation, the world still has a way to go towards complete gender equality in sports. Women are still overwhelmingly underpaid compared to their male counterparts. It's estimated to take another 131 years to reach full pay parity between men and women, according to the World Economic Forum’s Global Gender Gap Report 2023.
The French ban on the hijab during the Games further highlights how the bodies of minoritised females suffer the most, and even when competing on one of the most prestigious stages in the sporting world, women are still not free to make their own decisions on their own bodies, faiths or cultures. This ban does not exist in any other country or for any other athletes, and will undoubtedly have a damaging impact on the wellbeing and access to sports for many Muslim women and girls.
Even American and Canadian beach volleyball players came under fire with a plethora of sexist remarks from men online for playing in leggings, instead of bikini bottoms.
And if they weren’t enough barriers for women and girls to contend with, 75% of female British sports women have experienced some sort of sexism, with the levels of sexual harassment and abuse amplified within sports. Within just 48 hours of the Olympics opening, Eurosports commentator Bob Bollard was immediately axed from his job after making a sexist comment on the Australian female relay swimmers. Women, girls and people of marginalised genders deal with all of this, and yet a convicted child rapist is able to still make the national team and play at the Olympics. The inclusion and protection of Steven van de Velde is an agonising reminder for us all that violence against women and girls will be dismissed and ignored if the white, cis, male perpetrator is successful enough. Not only is he competing in Paris, but he has been allowed to skip post-match interviews and given extra bodyguards, while his victim, and so many others of us, watch on, aghast, as his smiling face is broadcast into our homes.
There continues to be a persistent belief that when it comes to sports, women and girls just aren’t as good as men, be it mentally, emotionally or physically. Only 20% of Olympic coaches are women, and whilst this figure has doubled since Tokyo and continues to rise, it serves as yet another reminder of the male-domination within sports, with only 17% of director/CEO level jobs in sports held by women.
Whilst the science around trans advantages in sports is still somewhat inconclusive, World Rowing and World Triathlon allow transgender women to compete in female categories if their testosterone levels are below a certain threshold. Other international sporting bodies like World Rugby and World Athletics continue to impose outright bans on gender-diverse athletes in female elite competitions.
Even in physically minimal sports, like chess, gender eligibility policies have sparked controversy. The International Chess Federation temporarily restricted transgender women from female-only events, directly contrasting the more inclusive policies of other national federations like the English Chess Federation. In Paris so far, we have just seen Italian boxer Angela Carini withdraw from her fight with Algerian Imane Khelif, which has stoked yet another divisive gender row in sports. Khelif has faced accusations of being male, and claims that she should not be allowed to compete by the International Olympic Committee. She was disqualified from the women’s World Championships in New Delhi last year after she failed to meet the International Boxing Association’s (IBA) gender eligibility criteria. Khelif is biologically female, was born female, and is female on her passport. She comes from a country where it is illegal to be gay or transgender, which would also make it impossible for her to represent her country at the Olympics, were she trans. Most gender eligibility tests (aside from the IBA, who have not released their testing methods and have been discredited by the IOC for financial corruption and an ‘unfairness of judges and referees’) test a woman’s testosterone levels. Women have fluctuating hormone levels. Women have testosterone. Women who have PCOS, for example, have scientifically proven higher testosterone levels, yet are still very much female. What seems the most distressing in this situation, is the way the media are reporting on this. The IOC have defended their decision to allow Khelif to compete, saying she passed all the gender eligibility tests, is female, and there is no reason why she should not compete. The language the media has used is further stoking division and hatred towards the trans community, when, all the scientific evidence is telling us, this isn’t a trans issue. Some publications have even reported that Khelif is biologically male, and this has further bred hatred towards an individual, an international committee, and an entire community and its allies.
Whilst it is almost impossible at times to not get disheartened as a woman in sports, we simply cannot ignore the massive strides that are being made. Last year alone, 46.7 million people watched women’s sport on TV, and that is on track to be surpassed in 2024. You don’t have to look far to find incredible female sporting role models and an increasing number of male allies, who continue to pave the way for a safer, more inclusive world of sports.
