Will the International Olympic Committee pass the torch to women or let it burn out?

• Author: Dryden, Nikki

1. Introduction

   There is a growing global critique of the Olympic Movement that accuses The International Olympic Committee (IOC) of practicing 'amoral universalism' and widening the 'say-do gap' between the idealist human rights language of the Olympic Charter and the reality of the Olympic Movement. (1) This summer will not improve this image as Great Britain plays host to the world's greatest athletes for the 2012 Olympic Games in London. This will be the third time that the Olympic Games come to London, unfortunately for women, little has changed since they last hosted in 1908 and 1948 (2).

   At the Olympics this summer men will have the opportunity to win 108 more Olympic medals in London than women. That is 108 more local male sporting heroes; 108 more men with the potential to generate economic benefit from their Olympic glory; and 108 more men than women who will have the public and private support of the IOC.

   Men will also still run, swim, and bike further distances and compete in a sporting event, canoeing, that is not open to women. Women will continue to be left behind, as several countries may send men only teams to London, and all of this will happen in Great Britain, a country that generally promotes the rule of law and women's rights, and it will happen with potential impunity from international law under the mandate of IOC. Any attempt to question the British Government about the unequal policies regarding women's participation in the Olympics will be faced with a familiar argument: 'The IOC made me do it,' (3) which was made in 2010 in Vancouver, Canada during the Winter Olympics when a group of fifteen women's ski jumpers attempted unsuccessfully, to enforce their right to participate in the Olympics by relying on Canadian law.

   This article will outline the IOC's duties to promote and protect women's human rights in sport, including, non-discrimination of women at the Olympics and in the Olympic Movement. Despite their human rights discourse, the IOC still violates the rights of women athletes around the world, fails to uphold its own Olympic Charter, and through its actions, allows (if not forces) nations to violate international law. The goal of this article is to create a blueprint for real transformation at the IOC to conform to its own rules and international law. The IOC must become a transparent, gender equitable organization with a reality that matches its ideals, supports and promotes international law and the human rights of women in sports. To be truly transformative, it must mandate also the same changes of the Olympic Family as a condition of remaining in the Olympic Movement.

   This article will outline the legal mechanisms available to spur change from outside of the IOC, although it is clear that thus far such legal challenges have been largely unsuccessful. But the consequences of inaction for the IOC are grim: It risks its recently acquired United Nations Observer Status, losing corporate sponsor dollars, of further alienating athletes, and at worst, the complete erosion of the Olympic Movement. As Olympic scholar Bruce Kidd states, 'It is time for a new paradigm of Olympism and human rights.' (4)

2. Human Rights and the Olympic Movement

   The Olympic Movement encompasses all manner of sports organizations, including the IOC (the self-proclaimed 'supreme authority' of the Movement), International Sports Federations (IFs), National Olympic Committees (NOCs), Organizing Committees of the Olympic Games (OCOGs), national sports organizations (NSOs), and the athletes, coaches, fans, administrators, and officials who participate in these organizations. The Olympic Charter guides the Olympic Movement and all persons in the Movement, whether they know it or not, agree to be bound by it. (5) Thus the IOC holds tremendous power in world sport as all Olympic sports report up the ladder to the supreme authority, the IOC. This means that the IOC in effect, touches every person associated with an Olympic sport from the top Olympic athletes and officials down to volunteer parent coaches of the local soccer club.

   The plethora of issues at the nexus of human rights and sports has been addressed by many scholars. (6) Individual freedoms and collectivist rights include concerns over slavery and race, the promotion of peace and development, athlete's rights around health, labor and disability (7), and the right to participate in sport and physical education. There are also specific issues around the hosting of the Olympic Games, including environmental rights, housing rights, labor rights, and freedom of expression for both citizens and journalists. (8)

   Can sport really bring the world together and change lives for the better? Former UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan says, '[Sport] has an almost unmatched role to play in promoting understanding, healing wounds, mobilizing support for social causes, and breaking down barriers', and believes that sport has the power to breakdown 'myths and prejudices ... [and] that athletes as well as sports organizations are critical in ... breaking down gender inequality.' (9) Or are lofty statements such as this merely a smoke-screen for a dark reality?

   As the history of women and the Olympic Movement has shown, sport does not always make women's lives better. In fact, the women who have succeeded in the Olympic Movement have done so despite the IOC. As Hargreaves wrote in 1984, 'The history of the Olympics could be rewritten as a history of power and elitism, obsessions and excesses, divisions and exploitation. Certainly the modern Olympic Movement has been imbued with male chauvinism and domination over women.' (10) Can the torch of the Olympic Movement be saved or is it too late for radical change to keep it burning for another 100 years?

   2.1. Women and Olympic Movement

   When the modern Olympic Games began in 1896, women athletes were not welcome. Pierre de Coubertin, the founder of the modern Olympics said,

   '...no matter how toughened a sportswoman may be, her organism is not cut out to sustain certain shocks. Her nerves rule her muscles, nature wanted it that way ... Would ... sports practiced by women constitute an edifying sight before crowds assembled for an Olympiad ... Such is not our idea of the Olympic Games in which we have tried ... to achieve the solemn and periodic exaltation of male athleticism with internationalism as a base, loyalty as a means, arts for its setting, and female applause as its reward.' (11) American Avery Brundage's time at the helm of the IOC focused on women's participation in "feminized sports" like swimming, tennis, figure skating, and gymnastics, where women's "natural" attributes like grace, rhythm and artistry were an important component of the sport. In fact, 'Female athletes who did not meet these standards of beauty or feminine grace were accused of being mannish, lesbians, or of being unnatural.' (12) While women's participation increased over the next few decades, in 1954 the IOC voted to limit events for women to those 'particularly appropriate to the female sex,' (13)

   Several decades after the global women's rights movement began, the First World Conference on Women and Sport was held in 1994. Organized by the British Sports Council and supported by the IOC, the resulting Brighton Declaration, was at the time, a benchmark for action and change. The principles of the Brighton Declaration were to establish equity and equality for women in society and sport, increase the involvement of women in sport at all levels and in all functions and roles, and to make every effort to ensure that governments and institutions complied with international law. (14) The subsequent conferences have gotten bigger, but largely address similar issues. (15)

   In 1996, a Working Group on Women in sport was created within the IOC. The same year, the first IOC World Conference on Women in Sport was held in Lausanne, Switzerland. The first conference resolutions called for multiple initiatives to promote the role of women in sport, including calling on the IOC to 'attain[] an equal number of events for women and men on the Olympic Programme,' that IFs and NOCs 'create special committees or working groups' with at least 10% women to create plans to promote women in sport, and for the IOC to end gender testing. (16) Subsequent conferences held every four years in Paris, Marrakech, at the Dead Sea, and in 2012 in Los Angeles, have issued similar resolutions. (17)

   2.2. Women and the IOC

   The IOC is made up of individual members who do not represent their countries. They are voted into the IOC by secret ballot (18) of the all-powerful IOC Executive Board, who themselves are voted in by secret ballot. (19) Together the IOC forms a non-governmental organization with legal status in Switzerland whose purpose is to 'fulfill the mission, role and responsibilities as assigned to it by the Olympic Charter.'

   In 1981 the IOC started to 'work on women's involvement at leadership level ...' and the first two women entered the IOC: Flor Isava Fonseca of Venezuela and Pirjo Haggman of Finland, a three-time Olympian (20)

   who later stepped down in disgrace during the Salt Lake Bribery Scandal. (21) Despite then IOC President Samarach's supposed commitment to women's leadership, during the 1990s 40 new men were added to the IOC, but just two women. (22)

   In 2012, just 20 of 107 IOC members are women (less than 19%), three of whom are princesses. Add in the 32 honorary members, only four of whom are women, and women's power is further diluted. Of the twenty women, 10 have been put on the IOC in the last 5 years, meaning most IOC women members have no seniority and thus very little real power. In fact, only one woman sits on the powerful Executive Committee (Nawal El Moutawakel of Morocco (23)). According to the IOC, the Executive Committee is responsible for, among other things: monitoring the observance of the Olympic Charter, approving the internal...