‘Full Gender Parity’ at the Olympics? Yes, But…

The Paris 2024 Olympics have touted themselves as the first to achieve “full gender parity.” This, however, is far from the whole story.

Indeed, for the first time ever, competition spots have been distributed equally among female and male athletes in Paris—a feat to be celebrated, especially when as recently as 2000 the proportion of women Olympic competitors was only 38 percent. But to claim full parity is disingenuous and ignores the reality of women at the Olympic Games everywhere except the field of play.

A mere 13 percent of coaches at the 2020 Tokyo Games were women. In the decade before that, women made up only 10 percent of coaches at the Summer and Winter Games. Official numbers for Paris were not available when this issue was assembled, but they’re expected to be similar.

Moreover, only 33 percent of the IOC’s executive board is women, and 42 percent of their commissions are led by women.

Athlete participation is one critical dimension surely of the Olympic movement, but until positions of power on and off the field of play are held equally by women and men, equality has not been achieved.

The situation is familiar to coaches here at home, where only 29 percent of the head coaches of college varsity crews in the U.S. are women. To say nothing of the vast underrepresentation of minorities in the coaching ranks at every level of sport, including rowing.

Ninety-five percent of DI male athletes have a male head coach, while only 42 percent of women are coached by women, according to the NCAA Demographics Database. Eighty-five percent of DI athletic directors are men, while 47 percent of DI athletes are women.

Men and women have limited opportunities to see women in positions of power in college athletics, and almost no chance of seeing them lead men. When both female and male athletes experience these stark discrepancies at the highest leadership positions firsthand, outdated gender stereotypes are reinforced, discouraging women from seeking them and men from trusting women in those roles.

Nearly half the passionate, high-achieving, qualified experts in their fields are being eliminated from the coaching ranks, while everyone else is being told, explicitly or implicitly, that women cannot lead. Is this the kind of lesson we want to teach our young people just as they embark on their post-collegiate lives?

Lacking visible role models—and hence less likely to view coaching as a desirable or realistic career—women suffer. But men suffer, too, from not experiencing different, equally effective styles of leadership or being exposed to experiences and viewpoints that differ from their own. When women are excluded, men’s coaches are being hired from only 50 percent of the qualified candidate pool. Is that excellence?

What does sport, and society, stand to lose when women are not in these leadership positions? Beyond the obvious social and ethical implications, as long as such inequity is perpetuated, success cannot be achieved.

Gender-balanced teams of all sorts perform better than male-dominated ones, a Harvard study revealed. Companies with more women on their executive teams were found to outperform financially those with fewer, the consulting firm McKinsey & Company reported. (Similarly, companies in the top quartile for ethnic diversity show an average financial advantage of 27 percent.)

In short, when women are left out of the top spots at the Olympics, both as coaches and in IOC leadership, left on the table are medals and dollars.

So what can you do about it?

Any action is a step in the right direction, however big or small.

“Do something today to support, invest, encourage, mentor, cheer for, invest, speak up for, coach, invest, develop, promote, women coaches in your world,” exhorted Liz Masen, CEO of Athlete Assessments and a faculty member of the NCAA Women Coaches Academy.

Notice that three times Masen uses the word invest. Investing financially and logistically in coaches’ professional development is the most immediate and impactful way to support women coaches’ advancing in the profession or getting into it in the first place.

“When you invest in something,” Mason said, “you want to see it grow, provide a return, and make a difference.”

This is exactly how the Women’s Coaching Conference came to be–as a direct response to the need for women to have access to professional and personal development tailored to the unique challenges they face working in a male-dominated field. This year, the WCC has expanded coast to coast, hosting women rowing coaches in Boston (Dec.12 to 14) and Seattle (Feb. 4 to 6).

If you see a problem with the stats above, take action. If you’re a woman coach, attend the conference and bring others in your network with you. If you’re in a position of leadership, pay for women coaches in your organization to attend. If you have the resources, sponsor a scholarship so women coaches without the financial wherewithal can be at the WCC, grow their skills, expand their network, and make the sport of rowing a better, more inclusive, more successful place for all of us.

When half of the athlete population is not showing up in coaching and leadership positions, everyone suffers.

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