Paris 2024: An historic Olympics for women’s sport

Sarah Chaffey Senior Communications Officer Women in Sport

It was exactly 40 years ago, in 1984, when competitors lined up for the first-ever women’s Olympic Marathon in Los Angeles. This had been the culmination of decades of campaigning with a myth prevailing that women were not suited to running long distances. In the same year, in London, a group of sportswomen huddled in a small publishing house and dreamt of further change. On 18th May, they created our charity – Women in Sport. Fast forward to the Paris 2024 Olympic Games, and Sifan Hassan won medals in the 5km, 10km and the marathon, becoming the first person to achieve this in a single Olympic Games since 1952 – and surely dispelling this myth forever. From a Team GB perspective, Keely Hodgkinson became first British woman to win an Olympic 800m title since Dame Kelly Holmes in 2004 in a superb display of determination and self-belief.

There’s no doubt women’s running has come a long way. But Women in Sport is all too aware that sport has yet to achieve equality of the sexes and that this reflects ongoing inequalities in life.

This year, we decided to redraw the traditional Olympic medal tables by the number of medals won by women. The results were eye-opening. Great Britain achieved the best medal parity among the top ten countries, with 48% of their individual event medals won by women, compared to 52% won by men.

An impressive 56% of the USA’s individual event medals were won by women. If American women were their own nation, they would be third in the overall rankings behind only the US and China. This underscores the significanceof Title IX, a law introduced in 1972 which prohibits sex-based discrimination in schools or colleges with government funding.

This year, we decided to redraw the traditional Olympic medal tables by the number of medals won by women. The results were eye-opening.

We found a correlation between female athletes’ success and broader social equality, with the top ten countries for medal parity ranking above average on the UN’s Gender Inequality Index. After all, when women thrive in sport, they thrive in society, and the Paris 2024 Olympic Games set a brilliant example of that.