By Laura Pappano

The closing ceremonies in Vancouver are finished, so let’s reflect: Why does a tremendous sport festival whose aim is to foster political goodwill remain so darned sexist?

Events for women are typically lesser or shorter (or in the case of ski jumping, non-existent) compared with the men’s. Many of these differences make no sense:

– Women’s singles freestyle figure skating rules requires skaters to perform 12 compulsory moves and complete the program in 4 minutes, plus or minus 10 seconds. The same event for men requires 13 (one more!) compulsory moves and is 30 seconds longer. Hmm…?

– Cross country ski races are a study in gender differentiation, with men’s races longer – even though women are terrific marathon runners and as a group are physiologically suited to endurance events. Shorter because….?

– Short-track skating has many of the same events for men and women, but oddly when it comes to the relay(!), has a 5,000m event for men and trims the women’s to 3,000m.

– And then there are the pragmatic decisions, like shortening the luge track because of worries about racers reaching excessive speeds. If men are generally heavier than women as a group, thus more at risk for reaching those speeds, why shorten the women’s to the junior track just because you have shortened the men’s? Is this to ensure safety or intact male egos? Not surprisingly, several female athletes complained about being forced to race from the “children’s” start.

The overt sexism in the Olympics extends to the way female athletes are viewed and treated. And it’s not just me who sees this. Male sportswriters are screaming, too:

– In the March 1, issue of Sports Illustrated (yes, SI), Phil Taylor’s column, Point After, not only takes up the outrageous refusal of the International Olympic Committee to allow women’s ski jumping, but notes a chief problem contributing to the lack of competition in women’s ice hockey is the lopsided spending by many European countries on men’s sports. The Russian women’s team didn’t practice until three weeks before the games.

“Sexism isn’t confined to any sport or country,” Taylor writes. “It’s a universal language, spoken not so much with words as with action, or the lack of it.”

– And in yesterday’s Boston Globe, hockey writer Kevin Paul DuPont appears to stun even himself (“Call me a flaming feminist – please, just once, to make me fell [sic] all PC-like…”) when he defends the Canadian women’s ice hockey gold medal winners post-victory – and post medal ceremony – celebration and finds absurd the IOC plan for an investigation.

“Investigate? Please spare us the ‘Casablanca’-like roundup of ‘the usual suspects.’ We know what happened. They won a gold medal, in front of a screaming full house at Canada Hockey Place, and they broke out the booze and had a ball. Then they had to apologize.”

“Because…why?” His point: a blatant double standard.

We have four years before the next Winter Games, and two-and-a-half before the Summer Games in London. When the IOC gathers to reflect, someone should have the courage ask the question on a lot of minds: Why do the Olympics, which allows nations – even those struggling to be part of the civil discourse of the international community – enforce such a stereotyped bias against women?

Isn’t it time to lead instead of looking so utterly out of step?

View Original Post at fairgamenews.com

• Filed Under:  
• Olympics, Sports, SportsPLUS, Discrimination/Title IX, Winter Games, Sexism

• Tags:
• Olympics
• IOC
• International Olympic Committee
• Money Power & Politics
• Winter Game

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