Women well-represented at Olympics, but not yet treated as equals
Sean Fitz-Gerald, Postmedia News 07.29.2012
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London — She was one of the reasons the crowd clapped when Jacques Rogge, president of the International Olympic Committee, announced to a worldwide television audience that history was being made at the London Olympics. For the first time, he said, every country involved was sending a woman to compete: "This is a major boost for gender equality."
Bahya Mansour Al Hamad was one of those women. Hours after that speech, she became the first woman from Qatar to compete at an Olympics — placing 17th in the 10-metre air rifle on Saturday — and when she finished her event, her own speech faltered.
She said she was happy, that she had lived a dream.
Her eyes welled.
"I'm so proud," she said.
And then she was gone.
Not far behind her was another entrant who placed 34th despite being almost eight months pregnant. And behind both women were reams of stories about how many strides the IOC has made down the road to gender equality.
Women's boxing is making its debut as an Olympic sport in London. The United States is fielding a team with more women then men for the first time. Canada's team is comprised of 55.96 per cent women, the highest percentage in its Olympic history.
"I guess I would say to anybody who cares most about this issue: 'make sure you look behind the story that's being most actively presented,'" said Kathleen Lahey, a Queen's University law professor. "I absolutely celebrate the inclusion of women on as many of the national teams as possible, and think that it is wonderful that women are being sent by every country that is in the competition.
"But to stop at that as a definition of equality is like saying, 'wow, one member of Parliament from every province in Canada is a woman.' It's such a superficial, limited test of what the realities are."
Lahey was part of a team at Queen's, in Kingston, Ont., that helped prepare material for a British athlete launching a court challenge in London over the exclusion of women from canoe events. Women are only allowed to compete in kayak.
And that challenge, launched earlier this month, is an echo of another legal fight based on discrimination at the Olympics. In 2009, the B.C. Supreme Court said the IOC was wrong to have excluded women from ski jumping at the 2010 Olympic Games, but the court was powerless, because it did not have jurisdiction. (The IOC added women's ski jump to the program for the 2014 Games in Sochi last year.) "It's complete discrimination to not allow women to participate in some sports," Lahey said. "But because the IOC insists, as a term of its base contract with a sponsoring country, that they surrender all decision-making authority and application of their own domestic laws to the Olympics, the contingent on the part of the IOC is that they don't have to go by domestic equality principles."
And despite the heavily promoted steps toward equality this month in London, there have been several steps backward. In two now infamous instances, those steps manifested physically, with women walking past male counterparts and back into economy class on their airplane.
Japan flew its men's soccer team to Europe in first class, while its women's team — the defending World Cup champion women's team — travelled in coach. The rationale given was that the men's team, an under-23 group, was comprised of professional players.
The story was repeated in Australia, where the men's basketball team flew first class to Europe while the women flew coach. The Australian men have never won an Olympic medal, while the women have won silver in each of the last three Summer Games.
"It's been a bit of a sore spot, especially since the women are much more successful," former women's captain Robyn Maher told The Sydney Morning Herald. "I'm yet to find a nice answer for it other than they're male and we're female. You'd hate that that's the reason, but I'm sure it is."
The explanation there was, in part, based on the idea the men needed more space than the women. That is not entirely true, though. Women's player Liz Cambage, for example, is both taller (6-foot-8) and heavier (216 pounds) than men's player Patrick Mills (5-foot-11, 187 pounds).
"Referring to the airplane class issue is an important way to highlight how pervasive these discriminatory attitudes in the whole Olympic structure really are," Lahey said.
Badminton officials considered forcing female players to wear skirts in London, before backing away from the idea. The same idea wafted through boxing, before international attention helped to push it off the table.
"I really didn't understand that," boxer Claressa Shields told The Washington Post. "It was to help separate the men from the women. But we got different names! Women got breasts! We got butts! Can't you tell which one is who?"
In London, women will box in three weight classes. The men will fight in 10.
"There are various types of gender discrepancies that sort of permeate the whole Olympic structure," Lahey said. "And yes, incremental change is taking place, but the fact that it's a change in one location doesn't make the lack of change in another location more acceptable."
Nur Suryani Mohd Taibi was never going to miss the Olympics, even though she was just weeks from delivering her daughter. The 29-year-old from Malaysia competed with Al Hamad on the range Saturday, placing 34th despite being almost eight months pregnant.
On her way through the mixed zone, where athletes and reporters meet, she paused when asked about what Rogge had said during the opening ceremony. Having each country send at least one woman to the Olympics might boost the cause, but it does not stand as the end of the movement toward equality. It is estimated 40 per cent of the participants in London are female, roughly double the percentage at the 1976 Olympic Games in Montreal.
"Women and men can do whatever they can do," Mohd Taibi said. "It's not like men can only do the rough jobs, the challenging jobs. Women, also, can do. Maybe they open their mind and start to open their mind, and start to believe that … men have the strength, but women have the endurance."
Postmedia Olympic Team
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