The International Olympic Committee (IOC) has complied with recommendation 11 of the 2020 Olympic Agenda, the first of which in Europe. Accordingly, a 50% female participation in the games was established and the incorporation of tests with mixed groups was promoted. In the Olympics this year, about twenty groups of the 329 will be mixed.

The participation of women in the Olympic Games began in 1900 in the second edition of the modern Olympics held in Paris. Of the 997 athletes, 22 were women and competed in five disciplines: tennis, sailing, crocket, horse riding and golf.

It is customary to say that at that time women hardly practiced sport, as if this were the result of a lack of interest in physical activity, and not of a sexual policy that advocated a strong segregation between young men and women, in which sport played a fundamental role.

What was muscle Christianity?

The educational project of Baron Coubertín Pierre de Frédy, founder of the modern Olympic Games, was established in the movement called muscular Christianity, based on sport for the formation of young (men) in faith and masculinity.

In 1883, at the age of 20, Pierre de Coubertin undertook a physical education program at Rugby School, the private school that gave it its name. In this school is set the novel by Thomas Hughes Tom Brown's School Days, which inspired the movement.

Marked by the humiliation of the French defeat in the war between France and Prussia, Coubertin found a solution to the poor preparation of the French for the war, centred on the English. Over time, he also praised the diplomatic capacity of sport to maintain peace among the empires. This link between sport and the struggle between nations, imperialism and war destroyed a more playful and plural version of sport. That's how the Olympics emerged. These modern Olympic Games were seen by Coubertin as a celebration of white male hegemony.

Women who did not attend the Olympics were added "with kindness" by the organizers. The Olympic Games were fundamental in the process of masculinization of modern sport, and only the vindictive attitudes managed to broaden the presence of women and formalize

Allice Milliat was instrumental in this process, as the NOVA refused to offer more Olympic events for women, founded in 1921 the International Federation of Women’s Sport (FVDI), and that same year the First Women’s Federation. It organized the Olympics, then three more and four World Games were held.

II Paris Women's Fair The Olympics gathered 20,000 spectators in 1922. A colleague stated in 1960 that the IOC discussed in 1923 how to deal with the consequences of feminism in sport and reluctantly accepted the dissemination of female events to gain control over female sport.

Lack of parity in the direction of the COP

Parity, although historically a feminist claim, can hide other motivations: to keep on controlling. In fact, the Olympic Charter received in 1996 the commitment of the IOC to promote the presence of women "at all levels and in all structures, especially in the executive committees of national and international sports organisations, for the rigorous application of the principle of equality between men and women". Executive parity was not included in the 2020 Olympic Agenda, as if it had been done, recommendation 11 would be left unfulfilled: The management of NOVA currently consists of eleven men and five women.

But beyond the numbers, sport is subject to guidelines that make effective equality impossible. The dogma of sexual difference, also supported by parity, is one of them. She was born with the objective of protecting the category of women, but every time a female athlete questions the superiority of men, all the decisions of the federations have been marked by the division based on sex.

In 1992 it happened to Zhang Shani in Barcelona, after winning the gold medal and hitting his Olympic record in the mixed shooting. After the victory, the International Union of the Shooting banned the participation of women in the shooting, so Shane was unable to defend her gold in Atlanta in 1996 in a so-called "women's Olympics".

A mixed shooting event will be held in Paris in 2024, but with groups of a man and a woman following the "mixed" model being implemented to avoid direct competition between men and women.

Lindsay Vane was also unable to defend the record of her ski jump in the Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympics, as female participation was banned even though the record of participation was female. The International Ski Federation then justified the ban on the grounds of reproductive problems that may arise in the future. In 2010, the same arguments were repeated that at the beginning of the twentieth century, had excluded women from sport.

Although they seem anecdotal, these facts demonstrate that any policy of naturalization of sex and its functions will always impose limits on women. For years there were sex tests; today the limitation is the testosterone level, which is causing many African women to be kicked out of the championship.

For its part, France has vetoed veiled athletes to participate in the Olympic team and is rising up against the imposition of sexual clothing on players from different disciplines.

The bodies of athletes remain one of the main regulatory objectives of executive committees. After all, as long as sexual separation is the principle of organising the Olympic Games, they will always have to make a difference that justifies it.