This year’s Olympics were certainly a cause for celebration for women. With over 10,500 athletes, approximately half were women – marking the first time in history any Olympic games had gender parity (Buhler, 2024).
Another record was set too –193 athletes were LGBTQ+ identified, and out of them, 170 were women (Yip, 2024). With seven of their twelve players out, the US Women’s Basketball Team had one of the largest LGBTQ+ representations. The Australian women’s soccer team, with 12 out of 18 LGBTQ+ players, led with the largest LGBTQ+ representation.
American women also dominated the Paris Olympic games. With the help of athletic superstars Simone Biles and Katie Ledecky, the American women won more than half of Team USA’s medal. Out of 126 total medals, the women were responsible for 67 of them (Treisman, 2024). Notably, Team USA had the highest number of medals of any country.
Many believe that women’s success is the result of years of efforts tied to Title IX (Treisman, 2024). Yet, some were skeptical that Title IX has achieved its goals, including Ilona Maher, an Olympic rugby whose popular Olympic TikToks inspired quite a bit of discussion about gender pay disparity in professional sports. And there were signs that sexism was still very much at play during the Olympic game. Simone Biles had to address spectators’ comments about her hair after she completed a highly dangerous and technically advanced twist on the vault (Suggs, 2024). Male commentators had to be reminded multiple times to stop referring to women athletes as “girls” and to avoid framing their discussions of female athletes in stereotypical ways. For example, after winning gold in the 4x100m freestyle relay, British journalist Bob Ballard said, “Well, the women just finishing up. You know what women are like … hanging around, doing their makeup (Stechyson, 2024, para. 5).
Also, the participation of trans athletes was another contested issue with over 10 Olympic sports banning the participation of any trans athlete in a female category (Twigg, 2024). Olympic boxers Lin Yu-ting and Imane Khelif, who do not identify as trans, became a source of controversy when a Russian-led International Boxing Association claimed that they were not women. The International Olympic Committee declared these allegations were false (Lavietes et al., 2024), but that did not stop a whirlwind of scrutiny.
Certainly, there is still work to be done. So, as we celebrate this historic year for women, we must also look ahead and advocate for change in the Olympic Games held in LA in 2028.