Reviews mixed for Olympic gender equity

Women are competing at the 2008 Games in record numbers, yet the Olympic movement remains under fire on the gender front — accused of failing to reduce male dominance in its own ranks and tolerating countries which exclude women from their teams.

Of more than 11,000 athletes assembled in Beijing, 42 per cent are women. That’s up from less than 26 per cent in 1988, and illustrates the success of an aggressive campaign since then by the International Olympic Committee to move toward gender equity.

The IOC itself, and its affiliates, haven’t done nearly as well, falling short of their own goals.

Of the IOC’s 110 members, 16 are women — and only one serves on the powerful 15-member executive board. A sizable majority of the 205 national Olympic committees have executive bodies that are at least 80 per cent male, and only two of the 35 Olympic sports federations have women as presidents.

"I’m deeply disappointed," said Anita DeFrantz, the senior U.S. member of the IOC and chair of its Women and Sport Commission.

"I don’t understand why we haven’t been successful," she said. "I’m reviewing everything to determine what it is that’s blocking us."

One fundamental problem is that sports administration in many nations remains an old boys club. DeFrantz said change will be too slow unless the men in power commit themselves to grooming women as leaders.

DeFrantz also is among many advocates of women’s sports who have run out of patience with Saudi Arabia, the last major nation that bars women from its Olympic teams. She wants the Saudis — who have fielded a 17-man squad in Beijing — to be excluded from the 2012 Games in London unless they end their males-only policy.

"Perhaps after these games it will be clear they will be the only outliers and have to allow women to compete," DeFrantz said. "The women in that country deserve the opportunity."

Critics contend the IOC is failing to adhere to its own charter, which says discrimination on the basis of sex is "incompatible with belonging to the Olympic movement." They suggest that a double-standard is at work, with the IOC more tolerant of gender bias than it was of the institutionalized racial segregation that triggered South Africa’s exclusion from the Olympics during the apartheid era.

However, many IOC members may be reluctant to bar the Saudis from London.

"I’d be surprised and disappointed if we took such draconian action," said senior IOC member Kevan Gosper. "All that would do is have the athletes of that country suffer."

Apartheid "was considered a crime against humanity," Gosper said. "I don’t think that can be considered parallel to the effort to bring women into absolutely equal gender balance."

Whether Saudi Arabia changes on its own remains to be seen. The government is generally wary of angering conservative Islamic clergy, yet the issue of women in sports has been raised recently in the Saudi media and reportedly has been debated by a high-level government advisory council.

Saudi Arabia currently bans sports and physical education classes in state-run girls’ schools. Women have discreetly formed a few sports teams on their own, but the level of competition is considered a world away from Olympic calibre.