For the first time in history, there will be a 50/50 split of male and female competitors at this year’s Olympic Games, hosted in Paris, France.
It’s one of the biggest sporting competitions in the world, a global event that has a long history of excluding women from parts of the Games – on and off the field.
While some may argue it’s about time the Olympic Games are gender equal, Marie Sallois, the Director of Corporate and Sustainable Development at the International Olympic Committee (IOC), knows just how remarkable reaching this feat is for the organisation.
“It’s one thing, for instance, to get gender parity at a sports event in Australia – it’s another thing to bring gender parity across 206 territories around the world,” Sallois told Women’s Agenda.
“And this is what we’ll be seeing in Paris.”
Sallois has worked at the IOC for more than 20 years, witnessing the tireless work put into the organisation to champion gender equality, including the Olympic Movement, the Olympic Agenda 2020+5 and specific target-setting within the IOC.
But she knows this isn’t the end of the road for gender equality at the Olympics. Sallois was one of the first women in the IOC to be promoted to a senior management position: she more than anyone knows women’s representation in national and international Olympic and sport federation organisations – where decision-making happens – is much needed.
“One of the challenges for us is not just to get parity in the field of play, but to engage on how to get parity in all categories of personnel so that we have role models in every role,” Sallois said.
The history of women at the Olympic Games
Many know the story of how the modern Olympics Games came about. A French man called Pierre de Coubertin decided to revive the ancient Greek tradition, and the first modern Olympic Games were held in Athens in 1896.
Women’s participation in the games wasn’t a priority for de Coubertin: he, and many others on the International Olympic Committee, believed it would be “impractical, uninteresting, unaesthetic and indecent” for women to be a part of the tournament.
Although women were technically allowed to participate in the 1900 Games, Associate Professor Fiona McLachlan, a research fellow in the Institute for Health and Sport (IHES) at Victoria University, said it was really the 1908 Games, held in London, that saw more women participate.
Over the years, women were slowly granted more access to participation in the Games. By 1912, swimming competitions for women were established. It was here that Australia’s Fanny Durack became the first woman to win an Olympic Gold medal.
But until relatively recently, as McLachlan explained, women’s participation looked different and was still bounded by the dictation of what women could or couldn’t do with their bodies.
“Women were allowed in, but only if they met these standards of femininity and were still able to uphold traditional feminine attributes,” McLachlan told Women’s Agenda.
Take the 800m race in athletics. The women’s event was entered in the Olympics programme in 1928, but after the Games that year, women were no longer able to participate. It wasn’t until the 1960 games that the women’s event was readmitted in the program.
Why did this happen? The athletes looked “too tired” at the end of the race.
“The 800m race is probably the hardest to run,” McLachlan said, “so of course women are going to look tired at the end of it.”
“But the sense was that they’d gone too hard, and this was not going to be good for women’s bodies, and we needed to put a stop to that.”
Another example is the cycling events. Considered the “freedom machine”, women have been riding bikes since the 1880s. But cycling wasn’t an event women could enter until 1984 – just 40 years ago.
McLachlan said the emergence of women participating in the Olympic Games is a story of changing the power structure of the Games and the governing bodies, which began in the 1980s. Indeed, the IOC was made up of only men until 1981.
“When men want to make targets and make changes, that’s when equality happens – at least in terms of the numbers represented,” McLachlan said.
In 1994, the International Working Group for Women and Sport (IWGWS) created the Brighton Declaration, an international treaty that promoted gender equality and the inclusion of women and girls in sport.
Two years later, in 1996, the IOC amended its Olympic charter to include gender equality as an Olympic principle. This was only 28 years ago, when just 34 per cent of competitors at the Olympics were women.
On that note, from McLachlan’s perspective, it’s impressive that there is now a 50/50 gender split at the Olympic Games in Paris 2024 – and it’s all down to the IOC’s target setting.
Target setting
The Olympic Movement is a commitment made by the IOC, the International Sports Federation (IFs) and the National Olympic Committees (NOCs) to “contribute to building a peaceful and better world by educating youth through sport practised in accordance with Olympism and its values”.
In 2015, the Olympics Agenda 2020 was established, consisting of 40 recommendations for the three parties to improve the direction of the Olympic Movement. Its successor, the Olympics Agenda 2020+5, made an additional 15 recommendations.
As the Director in charge of Corporate and Sustainable Development at the IOC, Marie Sallois plays a huge part in ensuring the strategic roadmap of the Agenda is implemented. Part of that roadmap is ensuring better representation of women in the Olympics – both on and off the field – is achieved.
“Women face the same barriers at the Olympics unfortunately as in society,” Sallois said, “but we are very, very proud that in 2024, we’ll be celebrating parity in the field of play. This is an amazing milestone.”
In the last Olympic games in Tokyo 2021, during the COVID-19 pandemic, women made up 48 per cent of the competitors at the Games. While it wasn’t quite gender equal, UN Women recognised the Games at the time to be a huge driver in promoting gender equality in what was a difficult time for every part of the world.
“The Games were one of the most important moments during the pandemic for advancing gender equality,” Sallois explained.
What’s left to do
Off the field of play is where the IOC faces the most difficulties in women’s representation. On the IOC’s executive board, 30 per cent are women and 40 per cent of elected positions are held by women (increased from 20 per cent less than 10 years ago).
Gender parity has almost been reached in the IOC’s senior management, with 49 per cent held by women.
“Obviously it’s not the end of the journey,” Sallois said. “We need to work on many other things.”
Another challenge that lies ahead is women’s sport beyond the Olympic Games. Dr Fiona McLachlan from Victoria University has written on the “boom time” of women’s sport in Australia, which has occurred in every decade since the 1880’s.
According to her research, for more than 140 years, there have been so-called turning points for women’s sport in the country – yet not much changes over time in how Australians view women’s sports.
Although sceptical of yet another “boom time” following the significant rise of women’s sports last year, Associate Professor Fiona McLachlan hopes the excitement and viewership of women at the Olympic Games will be brought back home into domestic women’s competitions.
“In Australia, people are excited about both men and women competing in the Olympics,” McLachlan said.
“What I’d like to see is that translating out and into women’s sport more generally.”
Visibility, respect, recognition
Sallois knows that gender equality goes beyond the numbers: it’s also about visibility, respect and recognition for women’s participation in the Games.
On visibility, Sallois said women will be seen and watched in the Games on a much larger scale than ever before, matching the visibility of their male counterparts.
“We have the most broadcasted event in the world, but if you’re broadcasted in the middle of the night, you are not so visible,” Sallois said.
“So we have been working year after year to provide the same visibility to men and women as part of the competition schedule, and also as part of the medal events.”
Guidelines on the respectful broadcast of female athletes will also be distributed ahead of the Games to media personnel, including camera operators and commentators, which has also reached a step towards gender parity.
“It’s really about mainstreaming gender equality across all these different facets,” Sallois said.
Finally, recognition about how far the Olympic Games have come in terms of gender equality is central in this year’s Games, the first to reach on field gender parity.
Whilst just one per cent of sports venues in Paris are named after women, every single street in the Olympic Village is named after a women, rebalancing the visibility.
Traditionally, the Olympic Games closes with the men’s marathon, but this year, the order will be reversed, and for the first time, the Games will close with the women’s marathon.
What’s more, the marathon route has a special meaning: it will follow the same route of a famous Women’s March from Paris to Versailles in 1789 during the French Revolution.
And of course, the iconic Paris 2024 logo symbolises a gold medal, the Olympic Flame and Marianne, the face of a woman who represents the French Republic.