Women’s Road to the Olympics | Research and progress

The time trial heats were held the day before, and now it was time for the first Olympic women’s 800m final in world history. It was August 2, 1928, and nine competitors were standing at the starting line at the Amsterdam Stadium. Germany’s Caroline Radke took back the world record from Swedish running star Inga Genzel just a few weeks ago. Now it will be decided which of them was the fastest when it really matters.

how did it go According to several newspapers, it became a scandal. The New York Times She reported that six of the nine runners became so exhausted that they collapsed after finishing, and that several of them had to run off the track. Other papers wrote in the same vein, that the new distance cut women – just as critical voices had warned.

But in fact, nothing strange happened at all. The nine contestants have reached the finish line. Nobody seems to have collapsed. In a grainy film, you can see how the Japanese Kinue Hitomi, who won the silver medal, falls after finishing. But she won’t lie down. Male athletes have done and are doing the same. Germany’s Radke won and set another world record. Inga Gentzel had to be content with the bronze medal.

However, rumors spread. Medical expertise was to declare how dangerous it was for a woman to take part in such extreme exertions; They risked their fertility and premature aging.

Over time, the story got worse. when New York Evening Post Writing later about the final, suddenly five contestants didn’t make it to the finish line. Five more collapsed just after the finish line, and the eleventh runner was lost in the locker room. Despite the fact that even the number of contestants did not match – there were only nine – this became one of the most distributed editions of the final.

The circulating rumors about the 800-meter final is a good example of the backlash that hit women’s sport in the transition between the 1920s and 1930s, says Helena Tolved, a Stockholm University historian who researches the history of women in sport. In 2015, she published the book On the level of women: femininity, resistance and strength in Swedish sport 1920-1990.

– She said that sports followed the progress of women’s struggle in society. A lot happened in the 1920s – the success of women’s suffrage in many countries led to a struggle for equality in other areas, such as sports. For example, women started playing soccer, a little bit in Sweden, but above all in Great Britain. In protest that women were not allowed to compete in athletics at the Olympics, separate Olympics for women were organized in Paris in 1922 and in Gothenburg four years later.

In the first modern Olympic Games, in Athens in 1896, only men were allowed to participate. The next time, in Paris in 1900, 22 women competed in a handful of sports, with separate competitions for women only in tennis and golf. Since then, the women’s open Olympic Games have gradually increased. From archery in 1904, skiing in 1908 and swimming in 1912 to wrestling in 2004, boxing in 2012, and ski jumping in 2014.

Compared to the rest of the sporting world and society in general, the Olympic movement has often been a conservative force that hasn’t given women too much space, says Helena Tolved.

– She said that allowing women to enter Olympic athletics was a result of pressure from the Women’s Olympic Games. It was a victory, but at the same time it meant that an opposition movement was integrated into the hierarchy and silenced.

Somewhere, in the transitional period between the 1920s and 1930s, when the social climate grew bleaker economically and politically, the successes of women’s sport in the early 20th century largely came to an end, explains Helena Tolved. In Great Britain, the rapidly growing women’s football was banned and after the scandalous 800m final, it was seriously debated whether women should be allowed to participate in the Olympics at all. They ended up being allowed to stay, but they didn’t run more than 200 metres. Only in 1960 was the Olympic movement ready to reconsider this position.

– After the wave of women’s sports in the 1920s, there was a long period of silence that largely lasted until the 1970s, says Helena Tolved. Then came the second wave – which we can say is still going on. After all, it wasn’t until the 2000s that the two most crypto-male sports in the Olympics, wrestling and boxing, were opened up to women.

The athletic movement took shape during the nineteenth century, and was marked by the beliefs held at the time, not least about the sexes.

– Sport should nurture men, create male bodies, capable soldiers, says Tolved. With this starting point, female athletes become perverts who challenge notions of masculinity and femininity. Therefore, they have always been questioned, except for aesthetically coded sports, such as gymnastics and figure skating. These never conflicted with notions of femininity.

Regardless of the decade and the sport, the argument against elite women’s sports sounded roughly the same as it did a hundred years ago: It can damage the female body.

– According to gynecology in the 19th century, there was a lot of pressure on the genitals of women, and this idea really stuck around. It reappeared in discussion of every new running distance that was opened up to women – the marathon took until 1984. Before they dared to let women’s football join the Swedish Football Association in the 1970s, it was actually checked whether balls on the chest could cause cancer. the breast.

In 2005, the president of the International Ski Federation Gianfranco Casper declared that ski jumping “does not seem appropriate for women from a medical point of view”. Kasper still had to give up in the end, and in 2014 ski jumping was inaugurated as the last Olympic sport for women. But the Olympics and the world of sports still have a long way to go before gender equality, asserts Hakan Larsson, researcher at the School of Gymnastics and Sports, GIH.

– Male and female elite athletes still have very different conditions for their competition – for example when it comes to making a living from their sports, he says. And among athletic leaders, the gender imbalance is still too great.

There is also a significant imbalance in the International Olympic Committee, which consists of three-quarters of men. Founded in 1894, the International Olympic Committee had its first female members in 1981.

And although all sports in the Olympics are open to women, still more medals are awarded to men, because they can compete in more disciplines. In shooting: six events for women compared to nine for men. In wrestling: six against twelve. In boxing: three against ten.

Another difference is that there are still two Olympic sports in which men do not compete: rhythmic gymnastics and artistic swimming, notes Hakan Larsson.

– Women are embracing the men’s sport, but we don’t see much movement in the other direction, he says. Look at Swedish youth sports and you’ll see the same pattern: girls also apply for ball sports, but boys don’t start out with horse riding or roller skating. It says a lot about what is valued in our society.

Another question that Håkan Larsson is interested in is how sport relates to the fact that the division into two types is not always clear or sufficient.

– The evolution in society is moving towards us towards respecting different forms of gender expression to a greater extent and not directing people into two fixed lines, as we have traditionally done, he says. It has also become clear that our biological division into two sexes is not exhaustive: there are individuals who cannot clearly be classified as either. But this does not fit with the basic assumption of competitive heterosexual sports. The conflict is marginal today, but its importance is likely to grow. It is hard to see how it should be resolved.

Starting with these Olympic Games, women were gradually allowed into the equestrian fields of the Olympic Games. In 1952 it was dressage, four years later it was jumping, and in 1964 the event was infamous for several fatal accidents. Whether women can partly participate and partly compete with men depends on how class and gender factors interact, says Susanna Heidenburg, a professor of sports science at Malmö University.

Equestrian sport has military roots, and before 1952 only officers participated in the Olympics, she says. When the rules were changed and NCOs were allowed, the women entered at the same time. An important reason was the tradition of equestrian sport as an upper-class entertainment for both sexes. Britain had many women among its most brilliant passengers, enthusiastic in the process.

Today, equestrianism is the only Olympic sport in which there is no division between women and men. In the past, this also applied to archery and sailing.

Women competed for the first time in the Olympics in cycling, but perhaps more importantly, the first women’s Olympic marathon was held. The marathon, as the longest distance run for athletics, is above all a test of endurance, which has made female participation in the event an emblematic issue for both the women’s sport and its opponents. The battle had begun nearly 20 years earlier, when two women entered the Boston Marathon, where only men were allowed to run. Roberta Gibb crept into racing without a number plate in 1966 and Katherine Switzer signed by her first name the following year.

At the 1984 Olympics, Joan Benoit of America won with a time of 2:24:52. But more people might remember the television images of Swiss Gabriela Andersen-Schys striding towards the finish line with a dehydrated finish. In the eyes of some, a show of mental strength, in others a sign that the distance was dangerous for a woman.

But dehydration afflicts marathon runners of both sexes, and the only fatality in the Olympic marathon was a male competitor. Today, the women’s marathon world record is 2:15:25, which is 12 minutes 28 seconds off the men’s record.

When women were admitted to Olympic shooting in 1968, they were allowed to compete in open events against men. That principle still applied when China’s Chang Shan won Olympic gold in 1992. But in Atlanta four years later, she didn’t get the chance to defend her title. By that time, men and women were completely separated in Olympic shooting, and in many disciplines, including skeet, only men’s competitions were held. Skeet was introduced to women at the 2000 Sydney Olympics.

118 years after the first modern Olympics, the last* Olympic sport for women was opened: ski jumping. How did it take so long?

– There has been female ski jumping for 150 years, says Marit Stop-Neplius, PhD student in Sports Sciences at the University of Malmö and assistant professor at Dalarna University. Her point of view changed. In Norway, it received much positive attention during the nineteenth century.

However, back jumpers are not organized into federations and cups, she explains. Instead, they were brought in as jumpers or for entertainment during breaks in men’s competitions and were seen more as circus actresses than athletes.

– This approach has become entrenched and difficult to break, says Nabelius. In this way, ski jumping lagged behind in terms of gender equality. There was also a view of ski jumping as a test of manhood for skiing, which of course played a role.

She says things only started happening in the 1990s, with regulation both nationally and internationally. At first it was slow, but since 2004 the development has accelerated. Then the first International Women’s Cup sanctioned by the International Ski Federation was organized, and seven years later the IOC decided to allow women to jump at the Olympic Games – in the natural slope. In the ski big jump, so far only men can compete in the Olympic Games.

*Footnote: In Nordic combined (ski jumping + cross-country skiing) only men still compete in the Olympic Games.