Fact-check: Will the Paris Olympics really be the first gender-equal Games?
The Worldwide Olympic Committee (IOC) has been lauding itself for having achieved full gender parity for the time in historical past. However is that the truth?
With lower than 4 months earlier than the much-anticipated occasion, the Worldwide Olympic Committee emphasises the occasion would be the first gender-equal one in historical past.
One of many hashtags used within the promotional materials for the 2024 Paris Summer season Video games is #GenderEqualOlympics.
These upcoming Olympic Video games will certainly have a 50 per cent participation charge between women and men.
Nevertheless, within the 2021 Tokyo Olympics, 48.8 per cent of members have been ladies – very near attaining full parity.
However in sure disciplines, the parity shouldn’t be revered. Wrestling, for instance, is a sport the place solely males compete.
Then again, ladies are the one ones to take part in rhythmic gymnastics.
Due to this fact the IOC has modified sure occasions. The 50km stroll beforehand reserved for males will as an alternative be a combined relay race.
For girls, one weight class has been added for the boxing occasion, in accordance with the IOC’s web site.
“Parity shouldn’t be the identical as gender equality”
Nevertheless, there are nonetheless extra occasions reserved for males’s sports activities than ladies’s throughout these upcoming summer season video games — 157 males’s occasions in comparison with 152 ladies’s occasions.
In line with Michele Donnelly, assistant professor of sports activities administration at Brock College, numbers alone don’t inform the entire story.
“Parity shouldn’t be the identical factor as equality. It is a numerical equality. Gender equality is a a lot fuller understanding of women and men, not solely having the identical variety of alternatives however having the identical circumstances of participation,” she informed Euronews.
Michele Donnelly affirmed that gender-based variations are nonetheless very pervasive through the Video games and may embody the size of races, the scale and weight of kit (consider a javelin or shotput), and likewise uniforms required for women and men.
Some sports activities do exist through the Video games that haven’t any gender differentiation however are uncommon. They embody disciplines comparable to archery, triathlon and badminton.
“Claims which might be being made proper now [of gender equality] are very regarding as a result of they’re sending the message that we’re there, we have achieved gender equality and we simply have not,” she defined.
Furthermore, ladies stay massively underrepresented through the Olympics as coaches or technical officers.
Michele Donnelly additionally worries that the aim of parity throughout the Video games will take away alternatives for males, so as to add alternatives for ladies moderately than merely creating extra occasions for ladies as athletes.
“That does not meet any definition of gender equality that I am acquainted with. Taking away from one group so as to add to a different group shouldn’t be equality. And it implies that the athletes are those who’re being punished,” she mentioned.
An extended highway to gender parity
Gender parity has been quickly growing throughout the Video games contemplating the hurdles ladies needed to overcome to be a part of the Olympics.
The founding father of the IOC, Baron Pierre de Coubertin, barred ladies from competing within the first trendy 1896 Olympic Video games.
In 1900, 22 ladies have been welcomed to compete in 5 ladies’s sports activities. Girls didn’t make up greater than 10 per cent of members till 1952.
It was not till 2014 that the IOC added full gender parity as one in every of its targets.