The world is gripped by Olympic fever. We’re flying flags high, Tweeting support for our favorite athletes ( & 4eva!), and bemoaning NBC’s narrow, abbreviated coverage of the games. In this thirtieth modern Olympics, more than 10,000 athletes are expected to compete. And it’s an especially exciting time for women in sports!
Women’s Boxing is included in the program for the first time, which makes the 2012 Olympics the first to allow women to compete in all the same sports as men. Sixteen-year-old Chinese swimmer Ye Shiwen set a world record in the Women’s 400m Individual Medley this weekend, and her time in the last 50m (freestyle) of that medley was only 28.93 seconds, a hair faster than the men’s winner in the same event (American Ryan Lochte with 29.10).
But possibly the most important advance for women in this Olympics is that, for the first time in history, every National Olympic Committee (NOC) has sent female athletes to compete. This includes Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and Brunei, the three countries who held out, sending all-male teams through 2010.
History has a funny way of compounding quietly while the world turns. Let’s take a look back at the history of women in the Olympics:
1912 – Women compete in swimming events for the first time, but America refuses to send female swimmers, because the American NOC bars its female athletes from competing in events without long skirts.
1928 – Held in Amsterdam, these Olympics are the first to include women’s gymnastics and track & field events. After the 800 meter running event, several of the female athletes appear completely exhausted. As a result, women’s races longer than 200 meters are banned from subsequent Olympics until the 1960s.
1936 – One of the most politically charged Olympics, these games are held in Germany on the eve of WWII. German high jumper Gretel Bergmann holds the national record, but is excluded from the German team because she is Jewish. On an unrelated (though also disturbing) note, U.S. Olympic Committee president Avery Brundage calls for the establishment of a gender verification system, forcing all women to prove their sex before being allowed to compete. This remains a standard practice until 1999.
1948 – American Alice Coachman is the first black woman to win an Olympic gold medal (high jump). Dutch sprinter, and mother of two children, Fanny Blankers-Koen wins four gold medals in athletics; she is nicknamed “The Flying Housewife.” She also holds the world records in the high and long jumps, but in not allowed to compete, as rules prohibit women from competing in more than three individual events. These bans are lifted by 1952.
1960 – American Wilma Rudolph, a former polio patient, wins three gold medals in sprint events on the track. She is hailed as “the fastest woman in the world.”
1972 – In a monumental decision for women’s sports in the U.S., Congress passes Title IX to foster more equitable federal financial aid to women’s sports programs. Within a decade, there is a correlated surge of female participation in the Olympics.
1984 – Joan Benoit, an American runner, wins the first women’s Olympic marathon with a time of 2:24:52.
1992 – Just 20 years ago, 35 countries were still fielding all-male delegations.
2000 – Out of 10,651 athletes competing in Sydney, Australia, 4,069 are women. Women are excluded from boxing and baseball; men are excluded from synchronized swimming, rhythmic gymnastics, and softball.
2002 – For the first time since 1968, female athletes are not tested for gender.
2008 – The Olympic torch is carried by climbers to the 29,035-foot summit of Mount Everest. During the ascent, Tibetan women are first and last to carry the torch.
As our lives become more convenient, less beleaguered by gender prejudice, it would be easy to forget the long road our female ancestors have walked (and run, jumped, and hurdled!) in an effort to break boundaries for today’s lady athletes. Join me in celebrating the freshly broken ground for women in London this summer!
