by Marie Donzel-BlogEve magazine
July 2, 2024
The Paris Olympic Games will be the first in history to feature parity : 5250 female and 5250 male athletes are expected to take part in this major international sporting event.
But does parity mean mixity ?
Not quite.
Taking an interest in the way sport deals with the issue of gender equality is particularly interesting for thinking about the subject in business too.
Sportswomen” or the exception to the rule in men’s sports
Let’s face it, sport as we know it today was conceived as a place where the sexes were separated.
Indeed, Baron de Coubertin, creator of the modern Olympic Games, was very much opposed to women’s Olympiads, which he deemed ” impractical, uninteresting, unattractive, and we don’t mind adding: incorrect “.
So, when the Games were (re)born, female competitors were out of the question.
With five exceptions: tennis, sailing, croquet, golf and equestrian sports, where women were allowed to compete.
But why these sports?
Because they had a tradition of ” sportswomen “.
A tradition perpetuated by the aristocracy, who trained girls in a number of sporting disciplines in the same way as they were trained to play music, read or paint, all of which formed part of their “social dowry”.
But there was no question of showing off in sportswear, sweating or making sounds related to effort.
Feminine attire required!
Earning your place on the pitch… Competition!
From then on, the history of women’s sport was one of conquest, as discipline after discipline won the right to participate.
At the Amsterdam Games in 1928, several sports were opened to women: athletics, gymnastics, swimming… But women’s events accounted for only 12% of the total number of competitions presented at the Games.
The figure rose to 17% in 1952, 22% in 1972, 30% in 1988, 40% in 2000 and 47% at the turn of the 21st century.
It’s a long way to go!
This path has been strewn with many pitfalls.
For a long time, federation regulations stipulated that men and women could not practice the same discipline in the same costume, forcing women to practice in dresses or skirts (which, as common sense would have it, is not necessarily ideal for freedom of movement).
There was also the question of the aesthetics of sport: and there was endless debate as to whether a woman shot-putting, playing soccer, swimming the crawl or boxing was beautiful or not.
What if the spectators really wanted to see the grimaces of effort on the women’s faces, the sheen of muscles on their arms and breasts… Does that mean we didn ‘t want to see powerful, high-performance, competitive women ?
Something to ponder when we’re tempted, still today, to denigrate those who embody this power, this performance, this competitiveness on the grounds that it’s not “feminine” enough…
The taboo of diversity
Today, the Games are finally gender-balanced!
And all disciplines are open to women.
In absolute terms, this is also true for men, but that doesn’t mean that events have been organized to allow them to compete in sports that have long been considered “feminine”.
So, while in 2024, men’s teams will compete in artistic swimming for the first time, this will not yet be the case for rhythmic gymnastics, which will be the last unisex sport for the Paris Games.
But athlete Peterson Ceus is actively campaigning for an end to the gendered segregation of disciplines.
While we’ve made great strides in terms of the representation of women and men in all Olympic sports, one issue remains virtually unresolved: that of gender mix.
In most events, women compete on one side and men on the other.
But not together.
There are a few exceptions: horse riding, the mixed 4×100 relay in swimming and athletics…
But the general principle is still not to put men and women together at the same time on the same ground, in the same pool, on the same tatami, on the same track.
And why is that?
The argument is obvious: male and female physiologies don’t produce the same sporting performance!
Performance in question
Let’s talk about performance ! In sport, it has always been understood that the aim of competition is to determine who goes the fastest, the highest, the furthest, the strongest.
But now, with the announced end of record-breaking, this concept has been turned on its head.
You may have already noticed that it is much rarer today than it was 30 years ago to see a record broken in an official competition… And it is increasingly common for new records to be the subject of suspicion of doping.
This is only to be expected, says the report by the Labo “Sport, expertise et performance” of the Institut de recherche biomédicale et d’épidémiologie du sport (IRMES): by 2060, there will be no more exceeding human limits in sport.
In other words, the question of “who’s the fastest person in the world” or “who jumps the highest” or “who throws the farthest” will be settled once and for all.
This is likely to make certain events far less interesting, and may even lead to their disappearance.
With the disappearance of interest in an individual’s extreme physical abilities, the problem of differentiating between women’s and men’s abilities to within a few micro-markers is also likely to become obsolete.
Faster, higher, stronger, TOGETHER!
It’s a safe bet that the sports of the future will be more about team sports.
And the International Olympic Committee is making no mistake, revising its traditional motto “citius, atius, fortius” (faster, higher, stronger) to include “communiter” (together) from 2021.
In fact, all the new sports being created are team sports, and most of them have rules designed so that they can be played by both sexes.
footgolf
kinball
korfball
tchoukball, goaltimate
goaltimate
teqball… At the same time, traditional sports are being redeployed for mixed play, such as 3×3 basketball, touch rugby, real mixed soccer… Some are also taking advantage of the renovation of disciplines to see inclusion in a broader sense, such as seated volleyball, which enables able-bodied and disabled players to share the same court, the same rules, the same objectives and the same emotions at the same time.
Tomorrow’s sport could be even more exciting than it is today, because a whole field of innovation is opening up for us to reinvent it, obviously in terms of mix and diversity.
At the same time, this is an exciting area ofsocial innovation for companies: rethinking performance based on the principle ofinclusion.
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