Full Gender Equity In Paris

On International Women's Day, the IOC made the most apropos announcement it could.  And it was an announcement that was a long time coming.  For the first time in Olympic history, there will be full gender equity this summer at the Paris Games.  After women made up a mere 34 percent of the athletes at the 1996 Games in Atlanta, just 28 years later, half of the Olympic athletes will be women.

It's fitting that this will happen in Paris, too.  It was 124 years ago in Paris that women competed in the Olympics for the first time.  While the 1896 Games featured 43 men's events and no events for women, 22 women took part in 1900.  There were women's events in golf and tennis, and some women also participated in the sailing competition.  They made up 2.2 percent of the athletes...which would actually be the highest percentage until a whopping 2.5 percent of the athletes were female at the 1920 Antwerp Games.

That number was up to 4.4 percent the last time Paris hosted a century ago.  Women competed in track & field for the first time four years later in Amsterdam, and the percentage of female athletes at the Olympics finally jumped over 10 percent in 1952.  The 20 percent barrier was broken in Montreal in 1976, and the amount of women athletes has gone up incrementally since then, peaking at 47.8 percent in Tokyo before finally hitting the 50 percent barrier this year.

While this will be the first time in Olympic history that the athlete distribution is even, it won't be the first time at an international multi-sport event.  That distinction belongs to the 2018 Commonwealth Games, where the number of men's and women's events was also equal.  At the 2022 Commonwealth Games, meanwhile, there were more women's events for the first time ever at a major international competition.

We won't know the exact splits until the Olympics get closer and countries name their national teams.  So, it's possible that it won't be an even 50-50.  There may even end up being more women than men, as was the case with the American team in Tokyo.  Regardless, the fact that we're even talking about it is huge.  And it shows how far women's sports have come.

There will be 329 medal events in Paris.  The distribution isn't fully balanced, but it's close--157 men's events, 152 women's events, 20 mixed events.  Of the 32 sports, 28 will have full gender parity and one of the four that doesn't--rhythmic gymnastics--is a women's-only sport (a maximum of two men per team will be eligible to compete in artistic swimming, the other previously women's-only sport, for the first time in Paris).

Distribution won't necessarily be the same at the sports where it is equal, either.  In soccer, for example, the men's tournament includes 16 teams, while the women's tournament is only 12.  Likewise, in water polo, it's 12 men's teams and 10 women's.  But, that's balanced out by having more quota places for women in other sports (such as rhythmic gymnastics and artistic swimming).

Not only that, but the IOC will be continuing a tradition that started in Tokyo.  Each nation will be allowed to select two flagbearers for the Opening and Closing Ceremony--one man, one woman.  Every country is also being encouraged to have at least one male and one female athlete.  Whether that actually happens remains to be seen, but it's clear what the goal here is.  As is the message that's being sent.  Women aren't just a part of the show.  They're the stars.  And they deserve the equal billing they're getting.

And, make no mistake, women will be THE stars!  Katie Ledecky.  Simone Biles.  Sydney McLaughlin.  And that's just on the American team!  There will be plenty of international women taking their star turn in Paris, too, from Femke Bol to Ariane Titmus to the Chinese divers.

Women will be showcased at an Olympics like never before--and not just because of the roughly equal athlete ratio.  For the first time, the final event of the Games, taking place just hours before the Closing Ceremony, will be the women's marathon.  And the marathon course is inspired by the 1789 Women's March on Versailles, a key moment in the French Revolution.

Frankly, this has been a long time coming.  And not just because the percentage of female participants has been trickling upwards at every Olympics since World War II.  The IOC has been very deliberate in adding women's events (sometimes dropping men's events and replacing them with women's events), but they haven't done that just to increase women's participation.  They've done it because more women are involved in sports than ever before all over the world and they wanted to make sure that representation is proportional.  So, really, it was just a matter of time until the number of female participants/events was equal.

This will obviously be the biggest stage where women's participation has been growing, but it's far from the only major sporting event where we've seen it.  Last year's Women's World Cup was the largest ever, a 32-team spectacle that was far and away the best tournament in history.  And the biggest star in college basketball (men's or women's) right now is Caitlin Clark.  Women's sports have never been bigger, so it's only fitting that we'll see them equally represented at the Olympics for the first time while on such a high.

If you think it's stopping in Paris, you've got another thing coming!  The IOC will make sure of it.  As IOC President Thomas Bach said in the announcement, "Our commitment to gender equity does not end in Paris.  We will continue to pave the way for women and work with our stakeholders.  The IOC will continue to lead and use the power of sport to contribute to a more equal society."

As Beyonce declared, "Who runs the world?  Girls!"  We'll see that on full display at the Paris Olympics.  Men and women may be fully sharing the Olympic stage for the first time, but no mistake whose show it'll really be.  Paris 1900 is when women first competed at the Olympics.  At Paris 2024, they won't just make up half the competitors, they'll be the stars.