Since its opening on February 4, the Winter Olympics have frequently dominated the headlines, including the high-profile topic figure Gu Ailing, and today, she happens to participate in the women's steeplechase qualification tournament for freestyle skiing. Gu Ailing said in an interview that she hopes to become one of the few sports role models for girls, and her success is integrated into the gender equality narrative of today's Olympic Games, proving that women can also pursue strength, health and self-confidence.
What did women look like in the Winter Olympics? Looking back at history, you may be a little surprised, and the absence and contempt of women is the theme of this history. While much progress has been made today compared to the past, inequalities in the movement are still evident, and how far do we have to go to shake up the mountain of gender power structures?
History of women's participation in the Winter Olympics:
I used to be able to participate only in figure skating
Winter sports were not initially included in the Olympic competition, but by this time skiing, skating, sledding, and ice hockey were already flourishing in Europe, and the earliest images of women's ice hockey were recorded in 1890 (women's ice hockey was included in the Olympic arena until a hundred years later).
The first Winter Olympics were held in Chamonix, France in 1924, covering biathlon, curling, ice hockey, speed skating, ski jumping and other sports, with a total of 260 athletes from 16 countries participating.
Shanghai Mainland News report on the opening ceremony of the first Winter Olympic Games (January 27, 1924)
There are only 13 female athletes, who are only allowed to compete for the world championship in figure skating. In the end, Hungary's Herma Planck-Szabo (left) won the world's first gold medal at the Winter Olympics, while Britain's Ethel Muckelt (center) and The United States' Beatrix Loughran (right) won silver and bronze medals.
Group photo of the first Winter Olympics figure skating medalists in 1924
For a long time, women were only allowed to participate in figure skating, and it was not until 1948 that women's skiing appeared as an official event in St. Moritz, Switzerland. In 1952, women's cross-country skiing was added 10 km, men's cross-country skiing was divided into 18 km and 50 km, the former was later changed to 15 km, and in 1956 women's skiing added a 3*5 km relay, 20 years later than the men's 4*10 km relay event.
In 1948, the British female alpine skier Xanthe Ryder competed
In 1960, the eighth Winter Olympics were held in Valley, an obscure small city in the United States. Women's speed skating became an official event for the first time, with four sub-events of 500, 1000, 1500 and 3000 meters. The men's speed skating event has been basically fixed after the first Winter Olympics, with four sub-events of 500, 1500, 5000 and 10000 meters.
Female speed skater in the competition
In 1964, the women's event added single and double bobsleigh, which was also the first time that bobsleigh entered the Olympic Games. By the last Winter Olympics in 1992, held in the same year as the Summer Olympics, female athletes were admitted to the first biathlon, with 7.5 km, 15 km and 3*7.5 km relay triathlons, but as early as 1960, the Winter Olympics added men's biathlons. At this time, there were nearly 60 minor events in the Winter Olympics, and the number of female athletes reached 488, accounting for 26% of the total number.
With the Winter Olympics operating independently, small events are more abundant than before. The addition of freestyle skiing, snowboarding and other sub-events, snowmobiles are also open to female athletes, the 2002 Salt Lake City Winter Olympics for the first time set up women's double snowmobiles, nearly 70 years later than the men's event - in the first Winter Olympics in 1924, the men's four-person snowmobile was included in the official competition, and the 1932 Lake Placid Winter Olympics in the United States added a men's double snowmobile.
The women's ski jumping that Gu Ailing shined in fact became an Olympic event during the 2014 Sochi Winter Olympics.
In addition to being higher, faster, stronger, more united,
Also more gender equality
By the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics, the proportion of female athletes has reached 45%, the highest in history, and looking back at the first Winter Olympics held in France in 1924, only 4.3% of the athletes were women, after 40 years of affirmative action, it was also reflected in the Winter Olympic games.
Today, in addition to "higher, faster, stronger and more united", the Olympic Games must also pursue "more gender equality".
#1
At the Winter Olympics, seven competitions made their debut, with the purported goal of increasing the participation of female athletes.
One of them is a women's event, the women's single snowmobile. Single bobsleigh is currently only open to female athletes, because the four snowmobile events include men's double snowmobile, women's double snowmobile, men's four-person snowmobile, women's single snowmobile, only the addition of women's single snowmobile, so that women and men have two chances to win gold.
Women's Singles Snowmobile (monobob)
Three new events have been added to freestyle skiing, namely the men's and women's freestyle ski jumps, and the freestyle skiing aerial skills mixed team. In the mixed team competition, each team can send 3 players, 2 males and 1 female or 2 females and 1 male.
The other 3 new mixed events are: ski jumping mixed team, which is composed of at least 2 male athletes and 2 female athletes; snowboard obstacle track chasing mixed team, each team consisting of 2 people, male and female players 1 each; short track speed skating mixed relay, each country and region will send 2 male and 2 female teams, the Chinese team won the gold medal in this event.
The IOC hopes to contribute to gender equality by increasing the number of co-ed programmes.
Short track speed skating hybrid relay
#2
Figure skating should be the most popular of all winter sports and is a highly ornamental competitive sport. The men's singles figure skating competition held a few days ago has repeatedly appeared on the hot search, and the lonely challenge of Yusheng Knot and the new era of men's singles opened by Chen Wei have been written in various ways. But have you noticed that in figure skating before, the reference to women was "ladies"?
For more than a century, figure skating has adhered to strict and traditional gender rules, such as rules on clothing, distinguishing between actions that men should do and actions that women should do, and setting up pair skating. The use of "ladies" in figure skating emphasizes femininity, elegance and modesty, but when it comes to men, it is not the "gentlemen" corresponding to "ladies", but "men".
In June 2021, the International Skating Federation (ISU) finally made a change, announcing that it would change the "ladies" in figure skating to "women". Canadian figure skater and world champion Kaitlyn Weaver says the power of naming should not be underestimated: ladies rob us of our strength, athleticism and sexuality.
The names of the various figure skating actions have been changed accordingly
Break into the world of male domination of sports
Women still have difficulties
However, the above initiatives have been questioned as only a formal political correctness, the structural dilemma of female athletes has not been solved, and gender inequality in sports is still significant today.
The Winter Olympics still have a male-only event – the Nordic biathlon, which consists of ski jumping and cross-country skiing.
Because women's ski jumping was not established until the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi, there has been no Nordic biathlon for female athletes. After the addition of women's ski jumping, women's Nordic biathlon was possible, but it was not soon listed as an official event.
In preparation for the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics, in fact, the application for the addition of women's Nordic bipartites had already been submitted, but it was rejected by the International Olympic Organizing Committee. Maybe in 2026, we can see women participating in the Nordic binomial.
Because men are always considered better athletes and physically stronger than women, there is a huge difference between men's and women's events in some competitions.
For example, cross-country skiing, although men and women have 6 events, in this Winter Olympics, men's and women's athletes each 148 - the number is absolutely equal, but in terms of distance, men's and women's events are not the same. In 4 of these events, men are asked to skate longer distances, especially the longest distance races, with men skating 50 km and women only asked to skate 30 km.
Men's ski jumping includes individual standard platform, individual big jump and men's team competition, while women's events only have individual standard platform. Therefore, the aforementioned ski jumping mixed team competition is only held on the standard platform.
#3
Ice hockey is a sport dominated by men.
Specific to the Winter Olympics, there are 10 women's ice hockey teams (only 8 at the Pyeongchang Winter Olympics), but since the first Winter Olympics in 1976, there have been 12 men's ice hockey teams (14 in 1998 and 2002). Not only that, but the men's ice hockey team consists of 25 people, while the women's ice hockey team has only 23 people.
Female athletes also pointed out that the upward passage of women from athletes to coaches has been almost blocked, and the coaches of the 10 women's ice hockey teams participating in the Beijing Winter Olympics are all men. And women's hockey also lacks investment and attention.
ice hockey
The sport of ice hockey, especially in popular North America, is seen as a manifestation of masculinity, where players are explosive, aggressive, and physically aggressive in the game. So men are the "real" hockey players, and boys are encouraged to play hockey early and get more and better training resources. Under the traditional gender concept, men's ice hockey is what the sport should be, and people are happy to watch it, which naturally gets a commercial reward, which in turn encourages more men to participate in the sport.
If women participate in ice hockey, the situation will be awkward, they can not match the image of male ice hockey players, but also out of the conventional image of women. Some researchers have written that the women's ice hockey games challenge the hegemony of masculinity, emphasizing speed, strategy, and reducing aggression; but some female athletes believe that it is still necessary to follow the original appearance of ice hockey, body collision is an indispensable part, and they will be willing to abandon femininity and pursue masculinity.
Can't we talk about equality between men and women on the field?
Looking back at the history of women's participation in the Winter Olympics, women are always admitted later than men, and they are always not allowed to participate in some projects, and even if they participate, the intensity of the project is lower than that of men. Is it because snow sports are not suitable for women? Do these differences exist because women can't do it, or because they are not encouraged to show their potential?
At the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi, Czech snowboarder Sarka Pancochova fell into a groove between the two platforms to complete a high-arc rotational action. Fortunately, her body was not in serious trouble, but the helmet was directly broken in half. The New York Times said that full "gender equality" between male and female athletes on the track is indeed likely to bring more harm to female athletes - there are many participants who risk their lives to challenge the limits.
John O'Reilly, Ph.D., a doctor of exercise science at the University of Chinese in Hong Kong, disagrees, arguing that women are not unable to complete the same competition as men because of their physiological structure: "Men have more muscle than women, so they are stronger than women, and this is not the reason why women cannot participate in 10,000 meters of skating or alpine jumping." ”
Women's long absences or scorn in the winter arena are not so much determined by physiological factors as by gender power structures. Scholar Koivula raised the issue of gender in sports, where women are always expected to choose sports that help shape a slim, well-proportioned body, while men should participate in sports that require strength and endurance. That's why, for many years, women were only allowed to participate in figure skating, acting as objects to be viewed.
But when female athletes chase strength, speed, and self-confidence, they are still easily swayed by existing gender concepts. A paper interviewing female hockey players wrote that they would portray male athletes as ambitious, better at handling crises, and better at performing in sports, while female athletes were portrayed as relatively negative, emotional, and weaker players who focused on their own state rather than their performance. For most female athletes, the way they deal with their identity is often simply to distinguish themselves from ordinary women and then continue to agree with the traditional gender differences between men and women.
Unshakable gender power structures are also preventing more women from freely engaging in various sports and receiving support and rewards that rival men. Although the gender data performance of the Winter Olympics is becoming more and more flat, and female athletes are beginning to become popular idols, this is probably only a phased achievement, in the future, how to build a deep understanding of the gender power structure and find a positive coping strategy? That is the question we have to ask again today.
Editors: He Shanshan, Zuo Yaoyi
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