A POLICY ANALYSIS OF GENDER INEQUALITY WITHIN THE OLYMPIC MOVEMENT

Apparently, women have made substantial gains in their overall levels of participation in Olympic competition since the inception of the Modern Olympic Games in 1896. These visible benefits, however, have served to mask the overall inequality of male/female participation in the Games (Fleming, 1984). Large gaps in participation rates of males and females still remain and, at the Calgary 1988 Winter Olympic Games, women constituted only 21 % of participants. Women fared little better at the 1988 Summer Olympics, at Seoul; they represented 26 % of participants (Simri, 1979). This disparity in athlete participation is indicative of gender inequality throughout the Olympic Movement, inequality which is even more visible at the organizational and administrative levels. In the first part of this paper, I will look at the principle actors and dominant forces or determinants that have affected women’s involvement in the Olympic Movement. In the second part, I will offer an analysis of both explicit and implicit IOC policy regarding women’s involvement in the. Olympic movement. Relations of gender and the Olympic Movement reveal themselves best when examined from a historical perspective. The historical context in which these dominant actor