Sporting chance

In dress, sponsorships and travel, gender equality still eludes Olympic women

With every nation sending female athletes for the first time in Olympic history, the Games in London have been heralded as the Year of the Woman. Other gender milestones include an eightmonth pregnant Malaysian shooter competing in the most advanced state of pregnancy ever seen at an Olympic Games and, for the first time, female competitors from three Muslim nations — two Saudi Arabian females, three females from Qatar and one from Brunei.

The Games also mark the first time that female competitors are represented in every sport — unlike Vancouver, which excluded women from ski jumping. In the Summer Games, the last holdout was boxing, with women competing for the first time beginning Sunday.

For the first time on the U.S. team, the majority of competitors are women. Canada also has its largest contingent of female Olympians, with a team that is 56 per cent women.

“This is a major boost for gender equality,” said International Olympic Committee president Jacques Rogge. While it’s true that progress must begin somewhere, the IOC is a little late to the party, considering that it has taken 116 years since the birth of the modern Olympics to reach this point. At the first modern Olympic Games in 1896 in Athens, founder Pierre de Coubertin felt that including women would be “impractical, uninteresting, unaesthetic and incorrect.”

One needn’t scratch much below the surface to discover that gender equality at the Olympics, and in sports in general, is still fairly Nean- derthal. Two western democracies, Japan and Australia, flew some female team members to London in coach, while their male counterparts travelled in first class. The excuse for the Australian men’s basketball team is that size matters — a lame explanation, considering that one female basketball competitor is six foot eight and weighs 216 pounds, bigger than some of the Aussie men.

Olympic women boxers also had to fight to not wear skirts during competition — an absurdity they overcame. Skirts were also briefly considered for female badminton players. Until this year, female beach volleyball players were required to wear skimpy bikinis.

The female Saudi competitors marched at the rear of its delegation at the opening ceremonies and all must adhere to the kingdom’s conservative Islamic traditions, including wearing a headscarf despite objections from the international judo federation. A compromise was reached to allow the Saudi Arabian judo athlete to compete Friday wearing a special headscarf.

The IOC charter is committed to participation by women and the governing body deserves credit for pressuring nations like Saudi Arabia to be gender inclusive. But we mustn’t kid ourselves that issues don’t persist.

British silver medal cyclist Lizzie Armitstead complained this week about the “overwhelming sexism” that persists in her sport with respect to sponsorship and facilities.

Despite all this, women athletes endure. The Australian women’s basketball team, for instance, has won more medals than the men.