The Olympics, an all boys club?

COMMENT:Canadian journalist Laura Robinson comments on the ongoing heated debates as 15 female skiiers have taken their right to play to court.

In British Columbia Supreme Court this week The Vancouver Organizing Committee for the 2010 Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games (VANOC) has said it is an organization dedicated to the equality of women, and abides by the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, but unfortunately when it comes to deciding what events will be held at the 2010 Vancouver Winter Games their hands are tied because it is the IOC who decides this, and decides who competes in them. In this matter, they say, the Charter does not apply to VANOC because no government activity has taken place—the contract is solely with the IOC.

Well not really. VANOC stages the Games, and the IOC runs them, along with international sport federations like the Federation Internationale de Ski, but the athletes are the activity of the Games and they compete on behalf of the nation in which they are citizens. In fact athletes cannot take part unless they are actively competing on behalf of their nation’s government. Who would want any Canadian to go to the Olympics without complete and utter coverage of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms when it is the government that basks in the glory of their hard work?

VANOC has conveniently ignored that the Olympics are about athletes being active on behalf of their governments because they have spent the week disseminating IOC propaganda. For instance, even though the IOC is at the forefront of promoting equality, female ski jumpers cannot compete in 2010 because even a pro-woman organization like the IOC knows that women jumpers do not have what it takes to compete at elite Olympic competition.

Just because the IOC is comprised mainly of aging men—94 of the 110 members are male, and just because 61.7% of athletes competing at the 2006 Turin Olympics were male, doesn’t mean they aren’t looking out for women. And listen girls…err women…just because there’s only a “consensus statement” on sexual harassment and sexual assault, but no actual IOC policy on either, is no reason for you, whose futures so depend on whether or not the powerful men in sport open or close doors, doesn’t mean you’re not going to be treated equally.   

Why in 1997, the IOC established a minimum target of 20% female membership for National Olympic Committees so women would get into decision-making positions in various countries. Eleven years later, only 30% of the NOC’s had met the target, but it’s a start, right? Maybe by the end of this century.   

To ensure that women continue to receive such equality, the IOC instituted a Women’s Commission. And who might some of these champions of feminism be? Well, there is HSH Prince Faisal bin Al-Hussein, head of the Jordanian Olympic Committee, and in 2004 became a Lieutenant General in the Royal Jordanian Air Force. He is joined by champion shooters Raja Randhir Singh of India and General Mounir Sabet of Egypt, who is joined by General Lassana Palenfo, a seasoned military man from the Ivory Coast. Should they need any help maidens with which to consult, there are three princesses and one queen on this very busy Commission that meets once a year.  

VANOC member Walter Sieber filed a many hundred page affidavit listing all the wonderful things the IOC has done for women. He is also a member of the IOC’s Olympic Games Programme Commission. This commission, of fourteen men and two women, was resurrected—Sieber does not say when it last operated—after women’s bobsleigh and skeleton were added at the 2002 Salt Lake City Games because he says then mayor Deedee Corradini lobbied for them. Such a move, according to Sieber, who refers to himself and his commission as “impartial experts who make recommendations based on objective standards” threatened to “dilute the universality of the Olympics.”     

VANOC says it is the Programme Commission who make all decisions about what events are held at the Olympics and who can compete, and women’s ski jumping is not on the list.   

There is a piece missing in Sieber’s logic. If the IOC cares so much about the equality of women, why are there still no canoeing events for women at the Games? Why seven cycling track events for men and three for women? Why force female beach volleyballers players to limit their bikini bottoms to a maximum of 7 centimetres at the hip? Beach volleyball has a “control committee” that athletes must get permission from to even put on a sweatshirt during competition.   

I had a conversation while covering the Beijing Games with a journalist from the India Broadcasting Corporation. He told me there was an attempt to have a beach volleyball competition in the Madras region—where the women dressed modestly; not in bikinis—but right-wing men rioted and shut it down. There is no chance, he stated, of any women from India playing at the international level, without facing death threats when they return home. The same can be said for other countries where revealing one’s body is grounds for being killed. How has ensuring beach volleyball gets played in bikinis to bring in mega-millions to the IOC in broadcast rights helped bring the universality of sport to the hundreds of millions of women who live in India, the Middle East and Northern Africa?  

VANOC knew all of this and more when they signed on with the IOC. They knew ski jumping was not yet a sport for women at the Olympics, and made a deal with the oldest boys club on the planet anyway.      

Former Olympic swimmer and medalist from the 1968 Mexico Olympics, Marion Lay, says that in the forty-eight years she has worked for equality for women in sport, the fact that women ski jumpers in 2009 have to go to court just to have the right to compete makes these days the saddest of her life. “If someone had told me back in 1972 when I started the women’s program at Sport Canada that we’d still have to argue for fundamental rights nearly fifty years later I just would not have believed them” she said as she left the Supreme Court.    Note from the editors: The opinions expressed in comments are those of the writer and not necessarily Play the Game. However we support transparency and freedom of speech and aim to be the home for the homeless questions in sport.