(Reuters) – The 2024 Paris Olympics are likely to have equal gender participation, the Women’s Sports Foundation (WSF) said in a report on Thursday after analysing last year’s Tokyo Games.
Women accounted for 48.7% of athletes at Tokyo 2020, which took place in 2021 after being delayed due to the coronavirus pandemic.
That was an increase from the 2016 Rio Olympics, at which women accounted for 45% of participants, reflecting, the WSF said, “an important shift in Olympic history”.
“Based on the trends over the last three Olympiads, there’s a strong likelihood that female athlete participation will reach 50% in 2024,” the report said.
It pointed to restructuring of events as well as quotas established in many sports as instrumental in driving the increase.
Tokyo organisers placed renewed emphasis on gender parity in the run-up to the Games after former Japan Prime Minister Yoshiro Mori resigned months before the Games amid a furore over sexist remarks he made.
The International Olympic Committee (IOC) encouraged countries to present both male and female flagbearers at the opening ceremony, where possible, for the first time ever.
The WSF report said that while adding new women’s events – and removing some male ones – increased the overall number of opportunities for women to medal in Tokyo, the addition of mixed-gender events fell short when it came to levelling the playing field.
“The inclusion of mixed events was touted as a means of adding new opportunities for female athletes, though it did not add to the overall number of women competing,” the report said.
“Most of the athlete competing in mixed events, both male and female, were already competing in other events.”
(Reporting by Amy Tennery in New York, editing by Ed Osmond)
