It's the 'gender equal' Olympics, but that's not stopping the sexist remarks
Natalie Stechyson | CBC News | Posted: August 2, 2024 7:34 PM | Last Updated: August 2
Olympic commentator blasted for comparing tennis player to housewife
The International Olympic Committee says Paris is the first Games to reach full gender parity, with the same number of female and male athletes.
And women are dominating the headlines out of Paris, with superstars such as Simone Biles, Summer McIntosh and Katie Ledecky breaking records and raking in medals.
And yet, some male commentators are still under fire for comments they're making about female athletes during competitions. In one case, a Eurosport commentator was suspended for suggesting female swimmers were off fixing their makeup. In another, a commentator was condemned for using stereotypical cliches about housewives to describe a tennis player.
"On the left, there's Sara Errani, who's the boss. She does everything: The washing up, the cooking, the mopping up," a commentator from RMC radio said Tuesday during a doubles match pitting Caroline Garcia and Diane Parry of France against Sara Errani and Jasmine Paolini of Italy.
Last Saturday, British journalist Bob Ballard said on air after Australia won the 4x100m freestyle relay: "Well, the women just finishing up. You know what women are like … hanging around, doing their makeup."
Meanwhile, female elite athletes have long been referred to as "girls" or by their first names in sports commentary, while the same isn't true for men. And last week the official Olympics broadcaster had to warn camera operators not to film or frame female athletes in sexist ways.
"Unfortunately, in some events they [women] are still being filmed in a way that you can identify that stereotypes and sexism remains, even from the way in which some camera operators are framing differently men and women athletes," Olympic Broadcasting Services CEO Yiannis Exarchos told reporters,
He used an example that they might show a tight shot of a woman's face, but wouldn't frame a male athlete that way.
While these instances might highlight some of the more recent — and public — types of sexism female athletes navigate, some sports and media experts have noted there's a history there.
Elite female athletes are making great strides in their performance, but misogynistic culture and undertones are still pervasive, said Cheri Bradish, an associate professor in sports marketing at Toronto Metropolitan University.
"Male athletes are celebrated, and described in adjectives that really discuss the strength of their athleticism," Bradish, director of the Future of Sport Lab, told CBC News.
"There's always a shift, unfortunately, still, where female athletes are analyzed for the intrinsic, aesthetic and really outside-of-the-realm of sport perspectives."
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'Aesthetics over athletics'
Media Smarts, a Canadian digital media literacy organization, has noted that commentators use "different language when they talk about female athletes." Men are often described as big, strong, brilliant, gutsy and aggressive, the organization says in a recent report.
Women, on the other hand, are "more often referred to as weary, fatigued, frustrated, panicked, vulnerable and choking." Commentators are also more likely to call women by their first names only, according to Media Smarts, "reduc[ing] female athletes to the role of children."
A 2016 study from language experts at Cambridge University found that language around women in sport "focuses disproportionately on the appearance, clothes and personal lives of women, highlighting a greater emphasis on aesthetics over athletics."
These kinds of comments that rely on stereotypical ideas about women's characteristics and roles are unfortunately not surprising, Michele Donnelly, a sport management associate professor at Brock University in St. Catharines, Ont., told CBC News.
She emphasized these stereotypes of femininity aren't inherently negative, but it's a problem when they are used to describe only women athletes.
"These comments would not be so unacceptable, or jarring, if they were also said about men athletes, who sometimes run late, want to look their best, and do the unrecognized or less recognized work in a team event," she said.
And that's just the sexist language. Female athletes also contend with more revealing uniforms than their male counterparts, and are also more likely to experience harassment, violence and abuse, according to UNESCO.
"Honestly, there needs to be more work done to protect women in sports," Ebony Morrison, who will represent Liberia in the 100m hurdles, told Reuters last week.
"We're dealing with the outfits that we wear, the harassment online. Sometimes we're not in safe spaces with the people that are supposed to be there to help us, like our doctors, our coaches, so there really needs to be more done."
'No place in an international competition'
The French association of women sports journalists and the union of sports journalists released a joint statement Thursday in response to the "washing up" comments about Errani, the tennis player,
"Sexist and misogynistic comments have no place in an international competition," the unions said.
"We note that elsewhere in Europe, when there is a slip-up, there are sanctions," they added, a nod to British journalist Bob Ballard's suspension for his comments about the Australian swim team.
Ballard, for his part, posted a statement Monday on the social media platform X, noting his comments "have caused some offence."
"It was never my intention to upset or belittle anyone and, if I did, I apologize. I am a massive advocate of women's sport," he wrote.
All in all, it's disappointing, Bradish and Donnelley both said, noting these kinds of comments take away from the real story of the Olympics: The strength of the female athletes, who are the best in the world in their sports.
"Sadly, it's a reoccurring theme,and one we've seen in other sporting environments, as well," Bradish said.
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