Baron Pierre de Coubertin, the “father of the modern Olympics,” called women’s participation in the Games “impractical, uninteresting, unsightly, and inappropriate.
The first modern Olympic Games were held in Paris in 1900.
Of the 997 competitors, only 22 were women, or 2.2%.
Now, 124 years later, the 2024 Paris Games will be closer to “gender parity” than ever before.
“The Paris Games may not have achieved the goal of a 50-50 split between men and women, but it’s close,” the Associated Press reported on Monday, citing data from the International Olympic Committee (IOC).
Of the 329 medal events at the Paris Games, 157 were for men, 152 were for women, and 20 were mixed, with a slight predominance of men.
Of the 11,215 total Olympic athletes, 5,712 are male and 5,503 are female, a ratio of 51% to 49%.
At the 1924 Paris Olympics, held exactly 100 years ago, women made up 4.4 percent of the field, and by the 1932 Los Angeles Olympics, they represented 9.5 percent.
The proportion of women jumped to 20.7 percent at the 1976 Montreal Games, and has steadily increased since then, including at London 2012 (44.2 percent), Rio de Janeiro 2016 (45 percent), and Tokyo 2020 (48 percent).
The country with the most female athletes at the Games is the United States, with 338.
The United States has a higher-than-average percentage of women at 53% of its 638 athletes.
This is followed by host France (293), Australia (276), China (259), and Germany (239).
In terms of the percentage of female athletes, Guam (87.5%) is the top-ranked country, followed by Nicaragua (86%).
Sierra Leone (80%), Kosovo (77%), North Korea, Laos, and Vietnam (over 75%) are also countries where women dominate.
Conversely, six countries – Belize, Guinea-Bissau, Iraq, Liechtenstein, Nauru, and Somalia – do not have a single female athlete on their rosters.
Qatar, which hopes to host the 2036 Olympics, has only one female athlete in its 14-member squad, or 7 percent. 안전놀이터