Taking star role at greatest show on Earth
Fiona Tomas charts the rise of gender equality at the Olympics and Paralympics but finds there is still room for improvement
When Pierre de Coubertin, founder of the Olympics, excluded women from the inaugural Games in 1896, he did so on the grounds they would be “impractical, uninteresting, unaesthetic and incorrect”.
Ever since the scattering of these first seeds of gender inequality, the history of the Games has been peppered with small milestones in favour of gender parity. A historic decision in 1991 by the International Olympic Committee ruled that any new sport included on the Olympic programme had to include women’s events, while the 2012 London Games was a landmark moment for female athletes, who were represented in every sport for the first time.
The IOC this week confirmed to Telegraph Sport that the rescheduled Tokyo Games remained on track to be the most gender balanced in history, with the number of female athletes expected to rise to nearly 49 per cent. Next year’s Paralympics will also feature more sports women than ever before, with at least 1,782 slots available for female athletes, representing a 19 per cent increase from London, which could increase further due to the allocation of 300 gender-free slots.
Both are welcome statistics, especially considering women were forbidden from even running 800 metres for 32 years after the event appeared at the 1928 Games in Amsterdam because it was considered too dangerous. Women were banned from the marathon until 1984, and are still only deemed fit enough to run 100m over hurdles, as opposed to the 110m for men.
For all the progress in levelling the playing field, undeniable vestiges of gender inequality will peep through at next year’s Games. Last February, a group of female race walkers led by former world champion Ines Henriques lost an appeal at the Court of Arbitration for Sport to include a 50km women’s race walk in the Olympic programme. The 50km event is the only men’s medal event on the Olympic track and field programme which has no female equivalent, with women having to settle for 20km.
Perhaps the biggest gender injustice lies in women’s boxing. The number of weight divisions has risen from just three (51kg, 60kg, 75kg) in London and Rio to five in Tokyo next year, compared to 10 for men.
These limitations meant boxers such as Stacey Copeland were not eligible to pursue their Olympic dreams, despite being national champions during their amateur careers. With her fighting weight at 69kg, Copeland jokes she would have “had to chop off a leg” to drop down to 60kg, but there are wider, more serious ramifications of having so few weight categories for women at the biggest sporting show on earth.
“There’s girls in this country, two that I know of, who were absolutely busting everything to make those Olympic weights,” says Copeland, who in 2018 became the first British female to win a Commonwealth boxing title. “For one of them, her periods stopped and it was really damaging to her health. It’s that aspect – there’s actual real health implications for
For all the progress in levelling the playing field, gender inequality will peep through
some who try to make those Olympic weights.”
Copeland is equally critical of how two women’s weight categories have been added at the expense of two of the men’s in Tokyo, which will narrow the gender split to five and eight. “It’s just so damaging,” she sighs over our Zoom call. “It instils that sense of, ‘Where’s my slice of the pie?’”
For Paralympians, the battle for greater media coverage – the legacy of a historic positioning of para-athletes as secondary to Olympians – is a theme that
resurfaced during the coronavirus pandemic. According to British para-rower Lauren Rowles, who won gold at the Rio Paralympics a year after switching to the sport, the rescheduling of the Paralympics was rarely mentioned and everyone “just had to take it as a given that the Paralympics were going to be postponed because the Olympics were”.
“At Rio, we were labelled as superhumans,” recalls Rowles, referring to the promotional documentary made by Channel 4 before it broadcast the Games. “Is labelling us as superhuman too much? It’s almost making our disabilities a focal point. Some of us sit uneasy about it, we shouldn’t be seen as these inspirational kids who get out of bed every day and play sports.”
Contrast that to the carefully layered narrative that is often constructed around Olympians. “If you listen to commentary from track and field, the discussion around personal bests, season bests, athletes’ training partners, the people who’ve influenced them – all that creates a person’s profile,” says Dame Sarah Storey, the 14-time Paralympic champion.
“Those athletes have a profile laid out for them. People know who they are as a result of that coverage. That’s one of the reasons why coverage for para-athletes is so key, it allows commentators to sell those athletes. We don’t have the coverage in between Games or that platform to begin to follow a narrative, follow a story.”
Increased exposure drives sponsorship opportunities which, in the Paralympic world, can be virtually impossible.
“You could take a bronze medallist from the Olympic side, and they will get the sponsorship over the gold medallist from the Paralympic side,” insists Rowles. “I’ve seen it happen.”
Despite being a world and Paralympic champion, Rowles does not reap a penny through the few partnerships she has with companies, and the sponsorship deals she had been working on before the pandemic have fallen through.
“Sometimes I wonder, ‘What more do I need to do?’ You’re literally the best in the world, you try to be as good a role model you can be for the community – and sometimes it’s a case of being able-bodied and being disabled,” she says.
There are issues across the wider female sporting sphere. Investec will end their partnership with England Hockey and Great Britain Hockey in August ahead of GB defending their title in Tokyo.
Next year’s Olympics will have the highest number of women’s events with 147, but the number of female coaches in track and field remain frightfully low, barely exceeding 11 per cent at the two most recent summer Games. Just five of the 73-strong British team at the recent World Championships were coached by women, while five of the 41 at the World Para Championships were female.
Christine Harrison-bloomfield, who has worked with several global British medallists including Christine Ohuruogu, Asha Philip and Jodie Williams, bucks the trend. As the only elite-level female coach at London’s Lee Valley – who currently oversees British 400m sprinter Laviai Nielsen – she is blunt about her experiences in a predominantly male environment.
“One male coach once told me I should be at home cooking,” she recalls. “I said to myself, for that one reason I’m going to stay in the sport. If I had to be a trailblazer and be the person that takes the fall for everyone else, then that’s what I was going to become.”
The dearth of female coaches is a pressing issue, especially given how Great Britain is set to take more females than males to next year’s Olympics. The anticipated 51-49 percentage split in favour of female athletes includes a unique tribe of sportswomen, Laura Kenny, taekwondo star Jade Jones and equestrian rider Charlotte Dujardin, who are all on course to earn a third consecutive Olympic individual gold.
For GB Paralympics, there is predicted to be a 46 per cent female representation in their team, and should Storey compete next year, aged 43, she could also be crowned Britain’s most successful Paralympian, surpassing the medal record of 16 held by swimmer Mike Kenny.
It paints an undeniably healthy picture for a once minority group, in a past century deemed unworthy of competing in the greatest sporting event on Earth.
The number of female coaches in track and field remain frightfully low ‘I was once told that I should be at home cooking. That’s why I’m going to stay in the sport’