“We are moving slowly, perhaps too slowly. Perhaps Cojop could have placed a stronger emphasis on gender equality. Maybe yes “. The admission comes directly from Evelyne Ciriegi, member of the Paris 2024 Cojop and president of the Regional Olympic and Sports Committee (CROS) Île-de-France. “For the 2024 edition, Cojop communicated a lot about the fact that these are the first equal Games. But we have been seeing this discourse since 2004,” regrets Sandy Montanola, lecturer at the University of Rennes 1, specialist in gender inequalities in the media, particularly in the media coverage of sport.
So on this January 24, International Women’s Sports Day, 20 minutes hesitates between rejoicing at the parity concerning the approximately 10,000 athletes for the Olympic Games and the selected volunteers or denouncing gender washing. “Isn’t it a way of anticipating criticism of the economic and ecological costs of such an event to announce a social heritage where gender equality occupies an important place? », asks Sandy Montanola.
The Olympics, a relatively masculine sporting history
Because the issues of gender equality are in tune with the times, they have deeply penetrated current society. For Sandy Montanola, who recalls that during the last edition in Tokyo, there were 48.8% female athletes for 51.2% men and that the ratio was 45-55 in Rio, in 2016, “ the number of women participating in the Olympic Games has continued to increase over the years for more than a century. This is not the result of intense work by Paris 2024.”
Did you know ? In 1900, for the first time, women participated in the Olympic Games. There are 22 of them for 975 men, they have their own events in tennis and golf and are accepted in the mixed events of sailing, croquet and horse riding. On the Olympic fields, women therefore seem to have earned their stripes. But there are still blind spots.
Bodies always led by men
This is particularly the case for governing bodies. In France, of the 36 Olympic sports federations, four are led by women and the law on the democratization of sport dating from March 2022, specifies in article 29, that “female parity in the governing bodies of federations sports must be in place in 2024.” Paris 2024 did not a priori wish to anticipate this movement.
I am disappointed that those who make decisions at the top of Cojop are mainly men: there are one third women and two thirds men and a double, exclusively male thinking head with Tony Estanguet and Etienne Thobois, says Béatrice Barbusse, author. of Sexism in sport and deputy vice-president of the French handball federation. It’s a blatant inequality.”
Another debatable point: the appointment of two men, Jackson Richardson and Michaël Jeremiasz, respectively heads of the French Olympic and Paralympic delegations. “Why not take a man and a woman for the Olympics and the same for the Paralympics when these functions are supposed to be voluntary? »
Relative progress
Let’s return to the fields where there will be as many women as men, well not in all sports. “The organizers celebrate a fairly limited choice of indicators,” emphasizes Sandy Montanola. Indeed, for boxing, there will be fewer candidates for an Olympic medal than their male counterparts. The Olympic Games website specifies: “during the Paris 2024 Olympic Games, 13 weight categories will be contested in boxing. In accordance with the desire of the International Olympic Committee (IOC) to achieve parity between men and women, the number of categories will be more balanced than ever: seven for men, six for women. There will be one fewer men’s category compared to Tokyo 2020, while two additional women’s categories are on the program for the next Games. »
Boxing did not fit with the idea of femininity, which was associated with violence. It is also one of the sports that opened up to women the latest, rewinds Sandy Montanola. We can also cite the example of the 800 meters in athletics, authorized for women in the 1928 edition, then banned until 1960, because they were too weak to compete in such a tough event.
In charge of these decisions: the International Olympic Committee (IOC), which also displays some desires in favor of gender equality. In particular by requiring organizers to alternate at each edition, the women’s and men’s finals of team sports over the last weekend of competition. “Before Tokyo, for co sports, the girls played their final on Saturday and the boys on Sunday afternoon, the day when there are more people in front of the TV,” explains Béatrice Barbusse. But in 2021, the French handball players won the Olympic title on Saturday and the women the next day.” The opportunity for the Blues to have better media coverage? Not if we consider the front page of the newspaper L‘Team the next day, who preferred to celebrate the arrival of Messi at PSG, news which interfered with the end of the Olympics.
Lagging media coverage
“It is not enough that there are more women for them to have more media coverage. For a woman, to be in the media, you have to practice a popular sport, belong to a popular country and reach the final, while for men, it is more diverse, notes the specialist in gender inequalities in the media. “For women, we need them to already be in a dynamic of world-class results so that we are interested in them while men, we do not feel this need,” adds Evelyne Ciriegi, who pleads “for that we broadcast both the women’s and men’s competitions on TV during these Olympics.” When requested, the France Télévision group has not yet revealed its retransmission plan.
Solutions known but not applied
Another thorny subject is the price of tickets depending on gender. “Should we put the same prices on places in the same sport for both men and women and risk that certain tickets will not sell or on the contrary adapt the prices according to demand to be sure that everyone has an audience? », asks Sandy Montanola. No doubt between the two, an option for which Cojop worked. We finally found more differences between the events in sports with weight categories such as judo, where to see the heavyweights, you will have to pay more for both sexes.
Even if rugby sevens and basketball display some price differences between women and men at the same level of competition, ultimately, the spectator’s feeling is undoubtedly due to the fact that tickets for men’s competitions were snapped up more quickly and that there was more room to see women’s events. Note that only the women’s artistic gymnastics finals were more expensive than the men’s finals, 125 euros compared to 100 in category D.
The organization has focused on the future to advance gender equality with a budget of 50 million euros dedicated to legacy. “We know the avenues for equality in sport but no one listens. We know that equality is needed in organizational structures, that monitoring is necessary to avoid sexual and gender-based violence which is favored by certain structures in place. Except that we make a speech but we don’t really commit,” regrets the expert on gender inequalities in the media. Or only half.