The head of the company in charge of broadcasting the Olympic Games has called on camera operators to avoid “sexist” portrayals of female athletes at Paris 2024.
Yiannis Exarchos, CEO of Olympic Broadcasting Services, said his company and the Games as a whole are committed to equality between the men’s and women’s competitions this summer.
“Women are not there because they are more attractive – they are there because they are elite athletes,” he said.
He added: “[Equal participation of women] is not enough. It has not been enough for us. We wanted to make sure that the actual sports content was also reflecting this equality.”
This has meant changes to precedent about when certain events take place.
“The schedules of sporting events have traditionally been biased towards highlighting men’s events, almost always you have women’s competitions in the mornings, then the men’s,” Exarchos said.
“We have worked during these years together with our partners in the federations and our broadcasters in order to make the schedule, the programme of competition of the games of Paris, as equal as possible.
“Traditionally, the last event is the men’s marathon. Here for the first time, the last event of the game is going to be the women’s marathon. Traditionally, in team sports, you have first women’s finals and then men’s finals. Here you will see very, very important sports like basketball and elsewhere, where it will be the reverse.”
The IOC has billed this Games as the first to achieve parity between male and female athletes, although it has actually fallen slightly short, with 5630 male athletes to 5416 female athletes taking part in Paris.
Marie Sallois, Director of Corporate and Sustainable Development at the IOC was keen to praise the work which has gone into narrowing a historical male majority.
“Paris, will be the first Olympic Games with full gender parity on the field of play, and as a result, it is de facto the world’s largest platform to promote gender equality in and through sport,” she said. “It didn’t happen by chance. It is a result of many efforts and a strategic direction that has been given by a strategic roadmap.
“It is also the result of deliberate action from the IOC and the concerted effort of the entire Olympic movement, men and women, because gender equality is a team sport.”
