Women in sport got a bad deal from the beginning, as the founder of the modern Olympics, Baron Pierre de Coubertin – inspired by ancient Greece – felt the inclusion of women would be “impractical, uninteresting, unaesthetic, and incorrect.”
It wasn’t until the 2012 London Games that men and women competed in all sports – after the introduction of women’s boxing – and all participating nations sent at least one female athlete to the Games.
So while gender inequality still exists, there are encouraging signs to suggest progress is being made.
At UCI (Union Cycliste Internationale) events, individual prize money is equal between men and women. UCI is also experimenting with co-ed cycling competitions and invests in televising women’s cycling to promote it worldwide.
The New York City Marathon is another prize equaliser, while the US Open, was the first Grand Slam to offer equal pay in 1973.
In 2007, Wimbledon became the last Grand Slam to shake off its stodgy gender bias and equalise prize money.
However, it was only last year – at the 2015 FIFA Women’s World Cup in Canada – that complaints were raised about women’s games being played on artificial turf and offensive comments were made about female players’ appearances. There is, in other words, some way to go yet until women will be treated equally in sport.