Looking back at women’s sport at the Paris Olympics brings mixed feelings. The proud announcement of equal numbers of male and female athletes marked a significant milestone, but it’s been 124 years since women made their debut in Paris, so there’s no room for complacency.
There were incredible highlights, too, like Keeley Hodgkinson’s stunning performance on the track, Sky Brown’s fearless skateboarding and Emma Finucane’s impressive debut on the velodrome. The Olympic athlete of the year was Sifan Hassan, whose medal ceremony was the centrepiece of the Closing Ceremony, winning bronze medals in the 5,000m and 10,000m and gold in the marathon. Or Simone Biles, who has taken gymnastics to new heights, shown that you can have fun while cheering for it, and has moved on from the sport’s history of abuse.
But there were also downsides, particularly in the boxing fiasco, when the male leaders of the International Olympic Committee, who wield great power and authority, failed to fully understand what it meant to protect the women’s sector in sport.
Looking beyond the athletes, further disparities become apparent. Gender equality in coaching is still a long way off. At the Tokyo 2021 Olympics, just 13% of coaches are women, and in Paris that number is thought to have dropped. UK Sport has made a concerted effort to support the development of female coaches, doubling the number from 10%. Other roles such as officials, referees and leadership positions, as well as the prevalence of cameramen and photographers, show how big a mountain there is still to climb.
And the challenges continue: sports science has traditionally been male-dominated, resulting in deep-rooted systemic biases. In 2023, 8% of sports science studies will have been conducted exclusively with women. More needs to be done to support women in sport, as their experiences of sport in recreational and elite environments are influenced by differences in menstrual cycles, physiology and skeletal structure, as well as a range of life changes through puberty, fertility, pregnancy, postpartum experiences and menopause.
Female athletes are more visible than ever before, which helps. You can’t address what you can’t see. Several athletes have spoken publicly about natural performance factors that have been ignored, with Jazmine Sawyers, Dina Asher-Smith and Ailish McColgan pointing out the impact of menstruation on cramps and injuries during competition. Hodgkinson highlighted the lack of research into the impact of birth control on women in sport.
Former American track and field athlete Allyson Felix worked with her sponsors to fight for maternity rights for female athletes and opened the first nursery in France’s Olympic Village. Nine mothers competed on the British team in Paris, seven of whom won medals. Each has pioneered ways to combine motherhood with top-level competition, but as rower Helen Glover highlighted, support is needed to make the process easier for those who follow. Most other mothers who want to stay active will have much less support.
Allyson Felix, a new member of the IOC Athletes’ Commission, helped set up the Olympic Village’s first childcare center. Photo: Xinhua/Shutterstock
At the very least, we are starting to acknowledge some known unknowns. The UK Institute of Sport (UKSI) is leading overdue research to start a conversation about the menstrual cycle and its impacts among athletes, coaches and staff in high performance sport. Manchester Metropolitan University (MMU) has collaborated with UKSI on hormone and nutrition research to better understand Red-S (Relative Energy Deficit in Sport), which has damaged the sporting careers of many women.
MMU and UKSI are developing a global hub for research, education and applied practice in women’s health and performance to support elite athletes and wider public health.
Three accomplished women – coach Baz Moffatt, GP Ella Ross and sports scientist Bella Smith from The Well HQ, a consultancy on women’s health in sport – have all done their part to identify where systemic change is needed to enable women to take part in sport. They highlighted gaps in education, coaching, gear, equipment, knowledge, research and funding.
It can be as simple as finding a sports bra that fits well, or it can be complicated. One study found that a well-fitting sports bra can improve running performance by up to 7% by changing stride length, muscle fatigue, injury and perception of effort. This affects pace. A study of athletes at the Tokyo Olympics found that most did not know the best sports bra for their sport.
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Sports equipment companies are only now beginning to realize that women’s bodies are not simply the same as smaller men’s, and that sportswear has uncomfortably persistent aesthetic differences with huge social consequences. When Nike unveiled its track and field kits for Paris, there was uproar over the continuing distinction between women in high-cut leotards and bikinis and men in shorts and singlets. It’s hard to imagine men giving up performance benefits for modesty.
The recurrence of ACL injuries in women’s football has sparked a lot of uninformed speculation. Moffat calls it a canary in the coal mine that shows a larger system is failing women. He highlights multiple interrelated systemic factors, including poor playing fields, a gender gap in play that means fewer girls develop their agility early on by kicking a ball around in gardens and parks, less access to physiotherapy and nutritional advice, football cleats that don’t yet fit women’s feet, the unknown impact of hormones on the sport, and a poorly developed pathway to elite level.
The parallels across all sports are clear: England Netball, British Cycling and the Football Association have all formed pioneering partnerships with The Well to create sustainable change – this is a challenge for most sports, but progress feels too slow.
So let us pay tribute to all those who have contributed to the advancement of women’s sport in Paris and in our communities, but let us also look to our schools, clubs and sports centres, and call on governing bodies, sports manufacturers and government ministers to redouble all efforts and enthusiasm to reach even higher levels of equality in sport.
