- The IOC says it has made ‘good progress’ in boosting female participation at the Winter Olympics
- But mixed team events do not actually contribute to gender equity
- Opportunities for women came in monobob, a new Olympic event in 2022. But ski jumping and Nordic combined contribute to the gap
ZHANGJIAKOU, China – To hear the International Olympic Committee tell it, gender equity is just around the corner.
Ushered in by the organization’s addition of mixed team events over the past three Winter Olympics, the most gender equal Games are happening here in Beijing, organizers declare.
Despite that, the Games are hardly equal and contrary to the IOC’s proclamations, the mixed team events have done little to make them so.
A USA TODAY Sports analysis of mixed team events in these Games found that rather than improve the place of women at the Olympics, those mixed team competitions draw few new athletes in and favor men both in participation and medals.
Rather than helping women catch up to the men, they leave them behind in the name of equity.
“Adding mixed events sounds good on paper but in reality, it doesn’t benefit the number of women one would assume it would,” said Nicole LaVoi, director of the Tucker Center for Research on Girls & Women in Sport.
“It is one step but one at the bottom of a very long staircase where gender equity resides at top landing.”
Since 2014, the IOC has added mixed events in nine sports, including with the addition of mixed team aerials, ski jumping, snowboardcross and short track speedskating here. It has also added several in the Summer Olympics. With the addition of monobob for women and men’s and women’s big air for freeskiers, the IOC asserts these Games as the most gender equal.
That’s true – but largely because of its lackluster history on the issue. As recently as Torino in 2006, women made up less than 40% of Games participants. It has taken four Games to get to 45% in Beijing.
“These are actually very, very important because it sends a signal from the IOC to the national Olympic committees that the mixed events are important, that they need to build up the capacity of their women’s teams and invest in their women athletes,” IOC spokesman Mark Adams said, adding that the progression will also occur in individual events.
Four years ago, the IOC commissioned a gender equality review, which resulted in 25 recommendations related to participation, funding, governance and portrayal in media. It set a goal for equal numbers of athlete quotas – a total number of slots available per sport that it allocates in coordination with the international federations – and medal events for men and women by the Paris Summer Games in 2024 and Milan Cortina Winter Games in 2026.
But big gaps remain – everything from total participants to inequality in distances of races and outright exclusion of women in one discipline.
And the IOC’s primary solution – mixed team events – isn’t solving the problem.
“These may be a great idea, but the only statistic that matters is overall participation numbers,” said Roger Pielke Jr., a professor who studies sport governance at the University of Colorado.
“Equity is measured in terms of individuals, not sports, not disciplines, not team competitions.”
Mixed team events don’t close the gap
For US aerials skier Ashley Caldwell, a mixed team event helped her get her first Olympic medal.
The veteran paired with Christopher Lillis and Justin Schoenfeld to win the event in its debut.
“This is my fourth Games, and I’ve been in the hunt for a gold medal my entire career,” she said. “To do it with these guys is incredible.”
Undoubtedly, the presence of women in mixed team events does give them more medal chances. But it does the same for men and does nothing to close the gap between the two.
According to Olympic historian Bill Mallon, Beijing has 51 events for men, 46 for women and 12 mixed or open events. Adding those 12 to each gender still leaves a gap.
But it does allow the IOC to tout that women are competing in 53% of events in Beijing. What it avoids saying is men are competing in 58% of events as a result of the mixed events.
“If mixed events are added, that means men are also being added which does not address equity or equality issues,” LaVoi said. “Simply adding mixed events does not solve systemic gender equity issues that are embedded in the IOC.”
Indeed, it exacerbates them.
USA TODAY Sports analyzed the eight mixed team events that have been contested so far. Alpine’s mixed team parallel is not until Saturday and start lists were not available.
Of the 361 athletes who competed in them, more than 94% were already here competing in other events. In other words, the mixed team events overwhelmingly didn’t draw new athletes to the Games but instead relied on an existing pool of Olympians.
More than that, the athletes who did come here for mixed team events did little to create gender equity. A total of 21 athletes participated just in the mixed team event – 12 of them were women and nine were men, meaning women netted at total of three spots.
Rather than just giving more women medal opportunities, the mixed team events stunningly give the advantage to men.
Take aerials, for example. Though teams are required to have one man and one woman, they can choose either for the third athlete on the team. All six teams selected just one woman, meaning twice as many men competed in the event and twice as many men medaled.
In luge, the contrast is worse. Teams are made up of a one man, one woman and a doubles team – but the doubles team all consisted of two men.
Those inequities led to men having 35 more spots than women on mixed teams. And because of those inequities, 51 of the medalists from those events are men while 41 are women.
The IOC did not respond to questions from USA TODAY Sports about mixed team events and the inequities they create.
US female bobsledders make a push for more opportunities
Mixed team events have not been the only ones the Olympics have added for women. But the new ones here help show the continuing problem with closing the gap.
Monobob was contested here for the first time, giving women two bobsled events to be on par with the men. And it did draw in six pilots who were not here driving a 2-woman sled, the women’s other event.
But it’s not actually what the athletes wanted.
Led by Americans Kaillie Humphries and Elana Meyers Taylor, women pushed for the addition of a 4-person sled – like the men have.
“Me and Kaillie fought for four-person, the women before us fought for four-person,” Meyers Taylor said. “But the first thing was getting two opportunities. … I think four-woman was the better option just because it gives the brakemen more choice, more options. “
The International Bobsleigh & Skeleton Federation opted for monobob, a move that largely benefits women who are already here piloting 2-person sleds. Indeed, before Humphries and Meyers Taylor took gold and silver, respectively, this week, each had three Olympic medals.
“What I would love to see, not only for women’s bobsled but bobsled in general, is that eventually women get four-man and that men can do monobob,” Humphries said. “Three events for all athletes, regardless of gender, would really push the needle and move the sport forward.
“It would allow for more small nations within men’s bobsled, more participation for women if we can get women’s four-man going, and just greater opportunity for more athletes worldwide.”
The IOC touted that it has reached an equal number of athlete quotas in 10 of the 15 disciplines. Bobsleigh is not one of them.
Races not equal in distance or duration
Indeed, participation for women lags behind.
According to the IOC’s statistics, 1,315 women are competing here compared to 1,587 men. All athletes compete in one of those two categories, though all might not identify with them. American figure skater Timothy LeDuc is the first openly nonbinary Winter Olympian.
Two sports contribute disproportionately to that gap.
In ski jumping, which was added for women in 2014 – 90 years after the men started competing in it in the Olympics – women are still restricted to the normal hill. There is no women’s individual event on the large hill nor a team event, as there is for the men.
That’s only slightly better than Nordic combined, which men have competed in at the Olympics since the start of the modern Games. Though the International Ski Federation held world championships for women in that event – which combines ski jumping and cross country skiing – it remains the only event in Summer or Winter Olympics that women do not compete in.
The IOC’s gender equity report calls for competitions to be equal in distance or duration. Biathlon and cross country skiing abound with races that are longer lengths for men and shorter lengths for women. In cross country, some are double the distance.
To be sure, the IOC is not alone in creating these problems. It works with the international federations for each sport to try to address these issues.
But the events in the Olympic program are the IOC’s responsibility.
“We have made good progress here, going from 41% female participation in Pyeongchang to 45% here in Beijing, at the same time increasing the number of events,” IOC President Thomas Bach said earlier in the Games.
The IOC has increased events, but largely they have been mixed team ones that do not actually contribute to gender equity.
To many, that’s no longer acceptable.
“The Olympics have indeed made progress,” Pielke Jr. said. “But we should always remember that progress is measured against a baseline where women were not allowed to compete at all. Progress is no longer enough.
“This should be the last unequal Olympic Games.”
Contributing: Nancy Armor
