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In the normal course of events, the only women you can reliably count on seeing on TV or in newspapers are women currently or formerly married to Brad Pitt, women appointed to high public office and a random selection of actresses and models.
That's why the Olympic Games feel like a breakthrough every time they're staged, although not quite.
Still, when the Olympics are on, suddenly on TV screens and in newspapers you can see really competitive women with huge muscles, determination and courage written all over their faces.
Every four years, it's as though a door is pushed open and we're allowed to see beyond the narrow range of women normally permitted to take up public space. The Olympics is, for two weeks every four years, the one time that women's and men's sports are covered equally.
Women like wrestler Carol Huynh, who won Canada's first gold medal of the Beijing Games, are invited to talk on air in prime time about their sacrifices, their love of their sport, the mentors and coaches who encouraged them and their plans for the future.
For two weeks every four years, girls and young women around the world are exposed to images of strong, confident women whose countries expect them to win.
These women are treated like men, praised to the skies when they win, their performance picked over to the bone if they lose.
Boys are bombarded with these images year in, year out. They know they're expected to give 110 per cent for themselves, for the team, for the school, the country.
Images of athletes like triathlete Simon Whitfield struggling through pain and exhaustion form youngsters' ideas of what's possible. Girls need that as much as boys.
That's also why the International Olympic Committee has to commit fully to the equality of women at the Games.
Concretely, this means that women must in future Games account for 50 per cent of athletes. In Beijing, they comprise 42 per cent of 11,427 athletes.
Also, women should be allowed to compete in all the same sports as men. That includes boxing and ski-jumping, both of which the IOC has rejected for women on the spurious grounds that the sports are too demanding. This is an annoying vestige of the attitude that saw women banned outright when the modern Games were resurrected in 1896.
Finally, the IOC has to ban the participation of countries that do not allow women onto the teams they field.
Saudi Arabia and Qatar both sent all-male teams to Beijing this year, in direct contravention of the IOC charter that states that
discrimination on the basis of sex is "incompatible" with being a member of the Olympic movement.
These, too, are images that influence how men and women see themselves on the world stage. They are incompatible with the spirit of equality.
If equality is to be aired just once every four years, it has to be the real thing.
Janet Bagnall, Montreal Gazette
Published: Thursday, August 21, 2008
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