IOC’s archaic paternalism hobbles female athletes

In far too many places in the world, it’ s still taboo for girls and women to participate in sports.

They’ re hobbled by dress codes that for bid trousers and/ or require their heads and faces to be covered. They’ re forbidden because of long-standing and unsubstantiated concerns that their reproductive organs might be damaged.

This archaic paternalism lingers within the International Olympic Committee, which continues to fan concerns about sports’ negative health effects on women’ s and girls’ health.

The IOC’s website has a whole page drawing attention to the harms of female participation, but it’s posted under the innocuous and seemingly gender-neutral sounding heading of healthy body image.

It’ s only about women. Aside from a line about sports’ positive benefits, it’s all about risk and harm.

It cites scientific evidence that Relative Energy Deficiency in Sport (known as RED-S )“can have significant impact on the lives of girls and women concerned” and uses that interchangeably with Female Athlete Triad Syndrome.

Linked to the page is an article from the British Journal of Medicine on RED-S that notes what was once known as Female Athlete Triad Syndrome is only a symptom of the larger problem.

More than a decade ago, it says scientific evidence and clinical experience confirmed that an imbalance between athletes’ dietary energy intake and the energy expenditure is dangerous to all athletes—male and female.

Yet, in the IOC’s four, fictionalized, “educational videos” about RED-S, there are only two men.

One is a grieving father, whose daughter—a wrestler—apparently collapsed and died after a judge suggested that she’ d be “a shoo-in” for the Olympics if she dropped 15 kilos and wrestled in the 48-kilo weight class.

The other isa male skater, who sits (mostly) silent ly as his skating partner and wife explain show she starved herself to stay thin so that they could continue to do difficult lifts. Her eating disorder ended her dream, the fiction al skater says.

But the worst is the Hunger for Gold video about a fictionalized Kenyan runner, Ake yo Ab a si.

With her head wrapped in at urban and obviously pregnant, the fiction al runner tell show her father wouldn’ t allow her to train with her brothers after school because her mother needed her at home helping with domestic chores and caring for her younger siblings.

When she qualified for a special training camp, she worked so long and so hard that she had a stress fracture in her shin.

She only agreed to quit running when the doctor said she must or she would die because her heart muscles had been weakened from starvation resulting from too few calories consumed and too many calories exp ended.

“I had togo back to my father and tell him that he was right… I went back to my village and married the fastest boy in my class ,” she says, rubbing her belly. “And this one? Maybe she will compete and bring home the gold .”

The World Health Organization estimates that 81 percent of adolescent girls worldwide and 27 percent of women are in sufficiently active to beat risk of early death.

The Olympics are the world’ s biggest sports spectacle and no better place to showcase its benefits for women.

So why is the IO C focusing on harms? Why the underlying message in the videos that it will another generation before it’s safe for girls to compete?

It’ s unclear how long ago the IO C posted these videos. But for as long as they have been online( and for as long as they remain ), they provide specious justification to those who continue to deny women and girls the opportunity to play and compete.

So, when the athletes march in the opening ceremonies of the 2018 Winter Games in P ye ongc hang, don’ t be surprised to see more men than women.

Equality is the IOC’s goal, but not until 2020.