Los Paris 2024 Olympic Games These will be the first Games with equal numbers of men and women participating. 5,250 athletes of each gender will take part in the XXXIII modern Olympic Games between 26 July and 11 August.
The International Olympic Committee (IOC) thus complies with the 11th recommendation of the Olympic Agenda 2020which established a 50% participation quota for women in the Games and promoted the introduction of mixed team events, which will be around twenty of the 329 that will make up the Olympics.
Women’s participation in the Olympic Games began unofficially with the second edition of the modern Olympics, also held in Paris in 1900. Of the 997 athletes, 22 were women, competing in five disciplines: tennis, sailing, crocket, horse riding and golf..
It is often said that women hardly ever played any sport at that time, as if this were due to a minimal interest in physical activity and not to a sexual policy that defended a rigid segregation between young men and women, and in which sport played a central role.
What was muscular Christianity?
He educational project of the creator of the modern Olympic Games, Pierre de Frédy, Baron de Coubertinwas framed in what has been called muscular christianitya movement that considered sport central to forming young (male) people in faith and virility.
In 1883, at the age of 20, Pierre de Coubertin attended the physical education program at Rugby School, the private school that gave its name to the sport and where Thomas Hughes’ novel takes place Tom Brown’s School Dayswhich inspired the movement.
Scarred by the humiliation of the French defeat in the Franco-Prussian War, Coubertin saw in the English example a solution to the poor preparation of the French for war. Over time, he also praised the diplomatic potential of sport to maintain peace between empires. This association of sport with the struggle between nations, imperialism and war swept away more playful and plural versions of sport and gave rise to an Olympics that Coubertin conceived as exclusively masculine and celebratory of a supposed white superiority.
The Olympics did not “kindly” incorporate women. In fact, the Olympics were essential in the process of masculinization of modern sport and only a vindictive attitude managed to make the presence of women more widespread and official.
A key figure in this process was Allice Milliatwho, faced with the IOC’s refusal to expand the number of Olympic events open to women, founded the International Federation of Women’s Sports (FSFI) in 1921 and organized the first Women’s Olympics that same year, followed by three more and four other World Games.
The Second Women’s Olympiad in Paris in 1922 attracted 20,000 spectators. As one of its members revealed in 1960, the IOC discussed in 1923 how to deal with the effects of feminism on sport and reluctantly agreed to expand women’s events in order to take control over women’s sport.
Lack of parity in the IOC executive
Parity, although a historically feminist claim, can hide other motivations: to remain in control. In fact, the Olympic Charter In 1996, the IOC undertook to promote the presence of women “at all levels and in all structures, particularly in the executive committees of national and international sports organisations with a view to the strict application of the principle of equality between men and women”. “Executive” parity was not included in Olympic Agenda 2020, since, had it been, recommendation 11 would remain unfulfilled: the IOC board of directors is currently made up of 11 men and 5 women.
But beyond the numbers, sport is bound to precepts that make effective equality impossible. The dogma of sexual segregation, which also underpins parity itself, is one of them.
Defended to supposedly protect the female category, the separation of the sexes has marked the decisions of the respective federations every time an athlete has questioned male superiority.
It happened to Zhang Shan after winning gold and an Olympic record in mixed skeet shooting in Barcelona ’92. Following her victory, the International Shooting Union banned women from participating, meaning Shan was unable to defend her gold in Atlanta ’96, the so-called “Women’s Olympics”.
In Paris 2024 there will be a mixed shooting event, but with teams made up of one man and one woman, the “mixed” model that is being imposed to avoid direct competition between men and women.
Lindsay Van was also unable to defend her ski jumping record at the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics, since female participation was prohibited in the event, despite the fact that the record was held by a woman. The International Ski Federation then cited possible future reproductive problems for female jumpers to justify the ban. The same arguments that had driven women out of the sport at the beginning of the 20th century were repeated in 2010.
Although they may seem anecdotal, these episodes demonstrate that any policy of naturalization of the sexes and their functions will always end up imposing competitive limitations on women. For years, these were the tests for verifying sex; today are testosterone levelswhich are pushing many African women out of the competition.
On the other hand, France has banned the participation of its Olympic team Veiled athleteswhile players in different disciplines They reveal themselves against the imposition of clothing that sexualizes them.
The bodies of female athletes remain one of the main objects of regulation by the executive committees. After all, as long as sexual segregation is the organizing principle, a difference that justifies it must always be preserved.
This article was originally published on The Conversation. You can read the original here here.
Source: www.eldiario.es
