Among the 258 athletes lining up at the start of the first Winter Olympics held in 1924 in Chamonix, only 11 were female, all of them figure skaters. The length of their skirts, reaching a palm-width below the knee, caused a furore.
There have been more and more women competing in the Winter Olympics ever since. This year, for the first time in history, South Korea and North Korea are sending a joint women’s ice hockey team to the Games. Three Nigerian women are the first African team to compete in an Olympic bobsled event, having made their first sled out of wood and scraps four years earlier.
Does this mean women also have finally reached parity with men?
The percentage of women competing at the 2018 Winter Olympic Games is …
A look at the Olympic Games through the years reveals how women made strides in winter sports, albeit slowly. In Chamonix there was only one event for women, while in 2018 all but two disciplines offer equal chances to men and women to participate.
As more events were opened to women, most countries sent more female athletes to the Olympics.
Some, though, didn’t follow the trend. Three nations, Brunei, Qatar and Saudi Arabia, banned women from competing altogether until the 2012 Summer Games in London, and have yet to send a female athlete to the Winter Olympics.
China stands out as the only country with female-majority teams at all Winter Olympic Games since 1988. Chinese sportswomen started to receive equal coaching, equipment, facilities, and wages in the 1950s — two or more decades earlier than in many western countries. They were soon bringing in more medals than their male counterparts, which earned them even more support.
Playing catch-up
A few sports have been open to both men and women from the beginning, mainly those added to the Olympic programme after the 1990s, such as snowboarding.
But even as other sports became open to women, the number of events for women and men was usually not equal.
Even in disciplines where female athletes have achieved equal participation, many of their events have different durations and distances, stereotyping women as weaker and less skilled than men.
Breaking into men’s territory
Sport has traditionally been regarded as primarily a male territory, and female athletes have always had to fight against gender stereotypes portraying women as weaker than men.
The more physical and extreme the sport – hence more masculine in our eyes – the harder it has been for women to break in.
Researchers found that sports that are beautiful, graceful, nonaggressive, non-contact or aesthetically pleasing are typically considered most appropriate for women. They require precision and advanced skills, and are usually individual rather than team events.
On the other hand, face-to-face competition, aggression and body contact are seen as masculine. Researchers say people automatically associate male games with competitive spirit, discipline, stamina and devotion to a team.
However, recent studies have identified a slight shift in perception, indicating that attitudes towards sports and gender roles may now be more nuanced. Some sports, including snowboarding and freestyle skiing, are now considered gender-neutral. They are mostly individual non-contact activities that are both risky (a traditionally masculine trait), and gracious (hence feminine). In such sports, much like in figure skating, judges rate performances both by difficulty and aesthetics. These are also sports that tend to be more open to women.
People’s perception of sports as male or female-appropriate has had a huge impact on how quickly, or slowly, women managed to gain acceptance to compete alongside men. Take the quiz to test your own perception and see what studies have to say about it.
If this sport had a gender, what would it be?
Photographs: Getty Images
Sources: The International Olympic Committee; Wallechinsky et al., The Complete Book of the Winter Olympics (2014); Koivula, Journal of Sport Behavior (2001); Dong, The “Long March” of Women and Sport in Mainland China: Revolution, Resistance and Resilience, in Anderson et al., Handbook of Sport, Gender and Sexualities (2014)