Increased acceptance of women in sport

A total of 277 female athletes participated at Amsterdam 1928, representing less than 10 per cent of the total, in comparison with the 2 per cent recorded at Paris 1900, when women were first allowed to compete at the Olympic Games.

Public acceptance and the growing pressure exerted by female athletes were vital to this change. In the early years of the modern Olympic Games, medical experts were largely in agreement that women should undertake only moderate exercise, in order to keep fit and bear children, arguing that vigorous sport placed excessive strain on their reproductive organs. Doctors were even quoted in newspapers such as the London Daily Mail as saying that women who took part in endurance sports would “become old too soon”.

Women had already been allowed to compete in tennis, golf, archery, skating, aquatics and fencing at earlier Games. After years of lobbying by female athletes in Europe and the success of the Fédération Sportive Féminine Internationale (FSFI) and its Ladies’ Olympic Games, the International Amateur Athletic Federation (IAAF) and the IOC allowed women to compete in five track and field events at Amsterdam 1928: 100m, 800m, 4x100m relay, high jump and discus. Women were also allowed to compete in one artistic gymnastics event and a couple of women were involved in the 8m sailing competition.

Inaccurate reporting of the conclusion of the women’s 800m race – including false claims that several competitors had to drop out and others were in a state of physical distress at the line – led to global accusations that the event was too strenuous for female athletes. Such was the outcry that the IOC removed the women’s 800m from the Olympic programme. It did not reappear until Rome 1960, when women were allowed to compete at distances over 200m for the first time since Amsterdam 1928. The women’s 1,500m made its first appearance at Munich 1972, while the women’s marathon made its debut in Los Angeles in 1984.

Thanks to the relative success of the Netherlands’ women at Amsterdam 1928 – the gymnastics team won gold in their event, generating euphoric coverage in the national press – women’s sport received a significant boost in the country. As attitudes shifted, women began to participate more avidly in and compete in a wider range of sports, including hockey and rowing.

Since then, the path towards gender parity at the Olympic Games has been gradual. Women accounted for 34 per cent of participants in Atlanta 1996, while 48 per cent of the athletes at the Olympic Games Tokyo 2020 were women. Paris 2024 set the stage for the first gender-equal Olympic Games with women receiving half of the 10,500 quota spots.