Paris Olympics makes history with gender-balanced athlete participation

Paris 2024 has already created history as it has become the first edition to feature an equal number of male and female participants. The 2024 Olympics kicked off in Paris this week and the quadrennial sporting spectacle is scheduled to go on until 11 August. 

The Summer Olympics is arguably the biggest sporting event, and the latest edition has kicked off spectacularly in Paris. A total of 10,500 athletes are to participate in Paris 2024.

As per the official IOC (International Olympic Committee) data, a total of 10,500 athletes are expected to participate in 329 events across 32 sports in Paris 2024. The number of athletes has dwindled from the last two editions, but Paris 2024 already has its name in the history books. The 30th edition of the Summer Olympics has become the first ever Olympics to feature gender-balanced participation.

The very first Olympics, Athens 1896, featured a total of 241 athletes, but none of them were female. To this day, it remains the only edition of the Summer Olympics that does not feature any female athletes.

Coincidently, the very first Olympics to feature any female athlete also took place in Paris in 1900. A total of 997 athletes participated in Paris 1900, and female athletes comprised 2.2% of the total. The share of female athletes declined for the next three editions before it improved at Antwerp 1920 with a 2.5% figure.The share of female athletes first exceeded 10% at the Helsinki 1952 Olympics, where women made up 10.5% of the 4,955 participants. This percentage steadily increased over subsequent Games, surpassing 40% for the first time at Athens 2004, where women constituted 40.7% of 10,625 athletes.

Following the Athens Olympics, it took five more editions for the number of female athletes to reach parity with male athletes. At Tokyo 2020 (held in 2021), women comprised 48.8% of 11,315 participants. At Paris 2024, the share of female athletes has finally reached 50%, marking a 128-year journey from 0% to gender parity in the Olympics.