The Paralympics fails to live up to Paris’ gender-equal games standards

The Paris Olympic Games was heralded as the first gender-equal games, and for the first time in its history there was an equal number of medals for men and women, but the Paralympics is still a way off.

In Tokyo 2020, the 50km race walk only had a men’s category, there was one sailing discipline only available for men, and there was no women’s greco-roman wrestling, but four years later the Paris Olympics delivered medal parity.

However, the Paralympics is still a long way off, with only 235 medals for women out of 549 total medals, and 271 for men, with the biggest discrepancies surprisingly in swimming and athletics.

“Paris 2024 has always had the ambition of increasing the number of women athletes at the Paralympic Games. As the organiser of one of the biggest sporting events in the world, Paris 2024 wanted to make the Games a showcase for greater gender equality in Paralympic sport,” a Paris 2024 spokesperson told The Independent.

“Of the more than 4,461 athletes competing at the Paris 2024 Paralympic Games, 1,983 are women, twice as many as at Sydney 2000 and more than the 1,846 female athletes at Tokyo. Of the 549 medal events, 235 are for women. This is eight more than Tokyo 2020 and 28% more than Athens 2004.

“35 NOCs (out of 169) have a record number of female athletes this year, while 27 NOCs have more female athletes than male. In 15 sports, there are more female athletes than in Tokyo 2020.

“In 64 years of the Paralympic Games, we have almost achieved gender parity (55%/45%). At the same stage in its lifecycle (Rome 1960), the Olympic Games was at 11.4%.”

However the progress appears slow. Gender equality in terms of medals and events should be possible in 2024, especially in sports that are exponentially increasing in popularity for women.

The Paralympics GB team was 46 per cent women of the 215 athletes travelling to Paris, but only 45 per cent of the events were open to female athletes.

However, the discrepancy is still evident, with 116 male athletes and only 99 women travelling to represent Great Britain in 19 of the 22 sports included in the games.

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One of the most glaring examples is blind football, where there is an entire men’s 8-a-side competition, but there is not a women’s medal competition.

In England, the Football Association have run a men’s blind football team almost all the way back to its first inclusion in the Games back in 2004, with a women’s team established in 2022.

“Of course it is (a shame), it’s not just a shame it’s not right,” Catherine Gilby, the head of para performance at the Football Association, told The Independent.

“But you’ve got to look at how the IOC determine what sports get in, and there has to be a number of highly competitive teams on the rankings to warrant a place in the games.

“We’re holding our breath still about whether the women’s game will be in LA28, there’s a lot of rumour that potentially the women’s blind game will come on board then and potentially IBSA (International Blind Sports Association) will make sure that we’ve got enough teams on a competitive level to be able to push that bid forward.”

The FA was expecting a decision to be made about women’s blind football’s possible inclusion in LA28 in January this year, but have not heard anything else. With the sport just one of 33 new para sports that submitted bids to be in the next Paralympic Games.