Photo credits, from left to right: Wong Maye-E/Associated Press; Ezra Shaw/Getty Images; Yoan Valat/European Pressphoto Agency; Matt Slocum/Associated Press
By K.K. REBECCA LAI and JASMINE C. LEE AUG. 24, 2016
The success of women in Olympic sports can be tied to the opportunities available in their home countries. Women won more total medals than men in 29 countries that participated in the 2016 Rio Games and at least one other Summer Olympics.
American men won more medals than American women for much of the history of the Olympics, but that gap began to narrow in the 1980s. A decade before, in 1972, the federal government had granted women equal access to sports through the education amendment known as Title IX. Women surpassed men in the Summer Games medal count for the first time at the 2008 Olympics in Beijing.
In China, that feat came 20 years earlier. Women in China have performed better than men in their events at the Olympics since 1988, bringing home about 10 more medals each time.
Jamaica, a country with fewer than three million people, experienced the emergence of male and female superstars in track and field in 2008: Usain Bolt and Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce. Although the country’s female athletes won more medals than men at the Rio Games, Bolt received far more attention.
Mónica Puig earned Puerto Rico its first Olympic gold medal by winning the women’s singles tennis final. She was also the only athlete of the 40 representing Puerto Rico to win a medal this year.
The number of events that women are allowed to compete in is controlled by the International Olympic Committee and various sport federations.
Women first appeared at the Olympics in 1900; they competed in five sports. Other sports were added slowly, and the gap did not begin to shrink drastically until the 1990s. In 1991, the I.O.C. decided that potential new Olympic sports must include events for women.
Five years later, it revised the Olympic Charter to express the committee’s responsibility “to encourage and support the promotion of women in sport.”
Note: Only countries competing under current country codes are included.
Sources: Sports-reference.com; International Olympic Committee
Via Nobel Women’s Initiative
THIS WEBSITE CONTAINS SIGNIFICANT DATA FOR WOMEN, FOR MEN:
*Countries with more than 90 medals since 1948
*Countries with more than 20 but fewer than 90 medals since 1948
*Countries with fewer than 20 medals since 1948
*Over All, There Are Still Fewer Medals That Women Can Win
Извор: WUNRN – 08.09.2016
