The IOC says the Olympic Games has reached gender parity, but historic gender inequality still lingers

(CNN) — Three years before the Olympics last visited Paris in 1924, a small gathering of female athletes led by Alice Milliat staged their own Games as they were still largely excluded from the biggest sporting event in the world.

Female athletes competing at the Games was simply not “in keeping” with how Pierre de Coubertin envisioned the event he revived in 1896, an event he saw as an “exaltation of male athleticism … with the applause of women as a reward,” as he wrote in 1912.

Now, a century later in the French capital, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) has distributed its quota places equally in the hope that an equal number of male and female athletes would compete at an Olympic Games for the very first time, though it fell just short of that target as ultimately 5630 male athletes and 5416 female athletes will compete in Paris.

Still, women representing 49% of the total athlete population marks another step for gender equality in sport, one that has been celebrated as part of the increasing popularity of women’s sports and comes as the IOC attempts to address sexist media coverage and improve the support available for parent athletes. But at the same time, beyond the numbers, activists and academics point out that historic inequalities still linger at the Olympics, influencing everything from the small proportion of female coaches present to attitudes toward women’s clothing.

“Parity is one part of equality, but it isn’t equality,” Michele Donnelly, assistant professor of sport management at Brock University who specializes in gender equality at the Olympics, told CNN Sport. “It’s the numerical piece, but it’s not the conditions, status, experience piece that is still missing from large parts of athlete’s experiences at the Games.”

Nonetheless, at the same time as the Olympics targets reaching gender parity among its athletes, there is a “buzz right now with women’s sport,” soccer player Emily Sonnett told CNN.

It is part of moment when the growth of women’s sport is “unreal,” as Olympic volleyball player Jordan Larson told CNN, and headlines in the USA are dominated by figures like Caitlin Clark, Simone Biles and Nelly Korda.

And with the biggest ever proportion of female athletes competing on sport’s biggest stage spotlighted by “two weeks of major media coverage where the entire world is tuning in to watch,” it will have wide-reaching consequences outside sport too, Katrina Adams, the IOC’s Gender Equality, Diversity and Inclusion Champion for 2023, and the first ever Black woman to be President and CEO of the United States Tennis Association (USTA), told CNN Sport.

“I think that’s going to elevate how people are thinking about it, how people are looking at it, how the sponsors are looking at it, how businesspeople are looking at it and how the focus is going to say, wow, we really have to start to look at our sport different and our business different and how we address gender equality,” she says.

‘Only just now getting here’

Getting closer to this landmark of gender equality is “incredibly important,” Olympic weightlifter Jourdan Delacruz told CNN.

“It’s kind of shocking that it’s 2024 and we’re only just now getting here but I think it means not only that women are becoming better competitors but from the grassroots level, there’s more access, … there’s more representation that encourages girls and women to get into sport,” she said.

Women were prohibited from competing, and spectating, at the first ever modern Olympics in 1896, and then only allowed to participate in sports deemed suitable for them such as tennis, golf or equestrian.

It wasn’t until 2012 that the IOC allowed women to compete in all sports and 2014 that the organization committed to achieving gender parity among athletes at the Olympics, setting itself a series of targets to reach this milestone.

“They’ve really developed a roadmap and a plan that leads us to the place that we’re at this summer in the Paris Olympics,” Nicole LaVoi, director of the Tucker Center for Research on Girls & Women in Sport, told CNN. “There’s been some metrics and some accountability in terms of reaching these target metrics and one was equal participation so that’s really important.”

Over time, the number of female athletes at the Olympics has increased, rising from 11.4% of athletes in 1960, to 28.9% in 1996, 44.2% in 2016 before this opportunity for gender parity in 2024.

“We fought hard to be here, and I just want to say thank you to those in the past because you guys fought hard for me to be here right now,” US Olympic boxer Morelle McCane told CNN. “Just seeing all the love pour into women’s sport, it just opens up all these avenues. It’s beautiful.”

Part of the IOC’s strategy to reach gender parity has involved tweaking its program of events, in some cases by cutting male-only events like the 50km race walk in favor of a mixed gender marathon relay instead. In Paris, there will be slightly fewer women’s events than men’s events – 152 compared to 157 – as well as 20 mixed gender events.

And tangible images of gender equality will be emblazoned on TV screens around the world at these Olympics. The IOC has encouraged each country to have a male and female flagbearer at the opening ceremony, like in Tokyo when 91% of participating countries had a female flagbearer – a “subtle” but “major” shift, said Adams.

The organization has also reordered the broadcast schedule so that women’s events will run during peak viewing times and provided direction to producers to encourage a “gender equal and fair portrayal,” while the Olympic Broadcasting Services have increased the number of female commentators employed to 40% of its total.

Whether such steps have an impact remains to be seen – female athletes were about 10 times more likely than their male counterparts to be visually objectified by a camera angle at the Tokyo Olympics, according to a report conducted by The Representation Project.

And for athletes with children, there will be positive changes at this Olympics too, even if athletes rather than organizers are often the driving force behind them. Following pressure, most notably from French judo star Clarisse Agbegnenou, French Olympic Committee secretary general Astrid Guyart told reporters that breastfeeding athletes would be able to stay in hotels nearby the Olympic Village with their infants, per local media.

A nursery on site in the Olympic village for athletes will also provide space for athlete parents to spend time with their children.

‘More women through the pipeline of leadership’

But as female athletes are achieving gender parity on the field of play, female representation in the boardroom and among coaches, where power is concentrated, still lags behind.

Just 13% of coaches who attended the Tokyo Olympics were women, a number that is widely expected to rise but still remain low in Paris.

“If you look at women in coaching … you’re going to see a small percentage compared to men being in that role because since sports have started, it’s been a men’s play until women have had to start showing we can do great things as coaches and athletes … and we’re starting to see that shift,” Mechelle Lewis Freeman – a former Olympian and now the head women’s relay coach for the USA’s Track and Field Team – told CNN.

Freeman is the first woman to hold that post, she says, adding that the societal norms which traditionally prevented women from holding such leadership roles in sport are beginning to break down, particularly as their work “speaks for themselves.”

“Now you’re starting to see … the spaces being created,” she said. “Because the talent was always there … and so now you’re having that space for you to be able to demonstrate and show that, yes, women can do this too.”

With still such a low proportion of female coaches, they have taken to creating their own support systems, outside of their national federations and the IOC. Vicky Huyton, founder of the Female Coaching Network, has created a WhatsApp group for 52 of the world’s best female coaches to support one another, and share advice as well as vent about a system that still discriminates against women.

“We’ve got women who have coached a current Olympic gold medalist … that have still not been chosen as team staff for Paris, even though that athlete is going to be defending their gold medal,” Huyton told CNN.

She explains that many national teams don’t have a standardized way of selecting coaches for a major competition, instead relying on “who the head coach wants,” rather than considering the needs of female athletes.

Women are underrepresented in the boardroom as well as among the coaching staff – there has never been a female president of the IOC, while just a third of the IOC Executive Board are women.

For much of Adams’ career in the boardroom, after she had retired from professional tennis, she would look around “and constantly realize I was the only one,” she says, prompting her to “do something about it” and push for change.

“If you don’t have female decision makers in the room that understand female athletes, it’s very hard to make decisions,” she said. “That’s why we need to have diversity of thought in the boardrooms that are helping people understand what the needs of female athletes are, as opposed to just pushing these aside because they don’t understand them.”

‘My hoo haa is gonna be out’

For female athletes, meanwhile, controversies around their clothing have appeared in the build-up to Paris, much like they did in Tokyo when several of them found themselves rebuked for wearing too little – or too much – clothing.

“My hoo haa is gonna be out,” American long jumper Tara Davis-Woodall quipped when Nike released its designs for the USA track and field athletes at the Olympics with the women’s outfits featuring a high-cut bikini waistline and the men’s a boxer short cut that covered up more of their bodies.

Such a discrepancy prompted a torrent of criticism, including from former US track and field athlete Lauren Fleshman who wrote on Instagram that athletes “should be able to compete without dedicating brain space to constant pube vigilance … or having every vulnerable piece of your body on display.”

Nike later said the leotard design would be one of several options available and some athletes, including Davis-Woodall, walked back their criticism when they saw the uniform in person.

Still, the controversy is indicative of the greater scrutiny female athletes face when choosing their clothing. Due to France’s secular laws, Muslim athletes who wear hijabs while competing cannot wear them in Paris – a step that Amnesty International says “defies Olympic values and human rights” and that athletes say has forced them to choose between their faith and love of sport.

Some accommodations have been made for these athletes at the last minute, like French sprinter Sounkamba Sylla who is now able to participate in the Opening Ceremony after she had previously said she would not be allowed because she wears a hijab.

On Thursday, French sports minister Amélie Oudéa-Castéra told CNN’s Christiane Amanpour that Sylla and LVHM, who are designing France’s Opening Ceremony, found a solution where the sprinter can cover her hair.

“There’s a lot left to do, in terms of these kinds of things,” Donnelly said. “One of my biggest concerns, I think about the way that the IOC is promoting #genderequal Olympics is that overstating the accomplishments of these Games really sends the message that we’ve achieved everything we need to achieve with gender equality. And we know that without conscious, intentional action, to move towards gender equality, we consistently see regression.”

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CNN’s Coy Wire, Amy Jordan and Dan Moriarty contributed reporting.