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Analysis | Tokyo 2020 Games will have record number of women taking part but are they really the first ‘gender equal’ Olympics?
- Organisers claim almost 49 per cent of those competing at the games this year are female
- Saudi Arabia only allowed its first female athlete to compete at Olympics in 2012
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Our Tokyo Trail series looks at key issues surrounding the 2020 Olympics, which are scheduled for late July.
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“The important thing is not to win, but to take part,” said the founder of the modern Olympics Baron Pierre de Coubertin.
This year – 125 years after the first modern Games in Athens in 1896 – we will come somewhere close to a level field it terms of participation.
Tokyo 2020 is the “first ever gender-balanced Olympic Games in history”, the International Olympic Committee trumpeted in a press release to mark International Women’s Day on March 8 this year.
“Almost 49 per cent of the athletes participating will be women, according to the IOC quota allocation,” they said, adding that there will be a record number of women competing in the Paralympics, too.
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The question should be, is that enough?
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