Women and the Olympics

Last night, as I got into my super comfortable hotel bed (seriously the most comfortable bed I've ever slept in), I was overcome with tiredness. Since the bed was super comfy and my eyes were heavy, I could easily have gone to bed. My colleague had left the Olympics gymnastics on mute. Even with out the sound it's quite amazing, and I ended up unmuting it and watching for an hour or so. It is hard to turn off, or to look away for that matter, no matter how tired you are.

For those of you not watching the controversial results from the women's uneven bars, American Nastia Liukin tied with China's He Kexin but through a complex set of rules involving multiple tie-breaker ties, it came down to the second worst score and Liukin took silver (since there apparently no ties). As the camera man got up close and personal with Liukin and her father, everyone in the world could see she was disappointed, even though I guess this was her fourth metal. Apparently she was a great sport though:

Nastia, though visibly disappointed, handled the situation with characteristic class. Even when reporters asked her about He Kexin's disputed age (in May she was identified in a Chinese newspaper as being 13, SI says), Nastia responded, "She's an excellent athlete no matter how old she is."

I'm not going to lie, I was proud of her when I read that. Not to mention WOW those women were impressive. There is something about the Olympics that keeps me glued.

I don't usually watch many sports though, but there was an article in the NYTimes about how well Olympics does with women. They cited Seth Winter, senior vice president for NBC Sports and Olympics sales and marketing saying that “It’s not just a sporting event . . . It’s a cultural event.”

Interesting interpretation . . . I guess I didn't think of it that way.
Is it also possibly because more women are participating in the Olympics? The Economist reported that "This year's games in Beijing has more female competitors than ever before, making up 45% of the 10,700 expected participants."

I of course googled "Olympics and women" and found some other interesting things.

From Olympic Women

• Married women were barred from the Ancient Olympic Games, but prostitutes or virgins were allowed to spectate
• In the first Olympic Games in which women competed (Paris 1900) women represented 5 countries - USA, France, Great Britain, Switzerland and Bohemia.

From American Women in the Olympics

• During the nineteenth century, a common belief was that men were naturally aggressive and competitive and women were emotional and passive, making men better suited for strenuous exercise and sports. Doctors argued that because of the amount of energy women expended on reproductive functions, minimal energy was left for physical, psychic or intellectual endeavors.
• An American woman named Margaret Abbot was studying art in Paris at the time, and as she enjoyed golf and had already won several tournaments in the U.S., she decided to enter the golfing competition. Abbot, born in 1878 in India, won the nine-hole golf tournament with a score of 47. She is now recognized as the first female American Olympian winner. For her prize she received a bowl of Old Saxon porcelain mounted in chiseled gold but due to the confusion at the Games, she never knew she was an Olympic champion. Only recent research has shown that the golf tournament was on the Olympic program.[iv] Golf was never played at the Olympics again.

While these tid-bits seem concerned with the bias of the past there are still strides to be made concerning women.

The IOC's charter states that "any form of discrimination with regard to a country or a person on the grounds of race, religion, politics, sex or otherwise is incompatible with belonging to the Olympic movement." Why is it, then, that nations are allowed to participate without female athletes?

Some may argue against the systematic rules that dictated Nastia's silver metal. Is it fair because some of the judges were less experienced? That argument didn't sit well with me. I think rules are dictated so that things are fair, reguardless or rather in response to human error. In the same way that I am proud of Nastia for representing not only good sportsmanship as a gymnast, as a woman and as an American, I hope in the future we can be proud to see true fairness in all senses of the word.