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Commonwealth Games achieves gender equity in medal events

This will be the first Games to feature as many medal events for women as for men

Photo: Brendan Cleary

This year the Commonwealth Games will include as many medal events for women as for men, for the first time at any multisport games. “On the one hand, it took a long time,” says Bruce Kidd, the Canadian author, academic and athlete who co-authored a 2014 report for the University of Toronto’s Centre for Sport Policy Studies on gender equity at the Commonwealth Games, “but it’s an important achievement all the same. The Commonwealth Games Federation and the Gold Coast organizing committee get full marks for bringing this about.”

It was accomplished with the addition of seven new events for women this year. Claire Carver-Dias, Olympic medallist in synchronized swimming and Team Canada’s chef de mission for this year’s Games, trumpeted the achievement on social media earlier this week.

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“While there are other dimensions of gender equity that need attention in the Commonwealth Games,” says Kidd, “the creation of an equal number of women’s and men’s medal events is a first and a remarkable, important achievement.” 

Equity at the Games encompasses everything from governance to officiating, volunteer programs, and even how the Games are marketed and broadcast. 

The Commonwealth Games Federation (CGF) takes the issue of gender equity very seriously, and is in the process of implementing a number of intiatives to support it, with the help of the Gender Equality Task Force, set up in 2016 as part of the CGF’s strategic plan to push the equity agenda even further in future Games. Canadian Bruce Robertson, a former competitive swimmer and double medalist at the 1972 Olympics, is co-chair of the task force. 

Future Games are mandated to maintain levels that have already been achieved. “…Gender equality [has] to be universal in every aspect of the Commonwealth Sport Movement,” says Robertson, “and that is what we have done with the GES [Gender Equality Strategy.]”

In 2014, a report co-authored by former Canadian track star Bruce Kidd for the University of Toronto found that, though women have been included in the Games since its inception in 1930, their participation at the time was limited to seven diving and swimming events (comprising only 12 per cent of events). Medal events at the 2010 games had gone up to 46 per cent women’s, even though the number of events increased steadily for both men and women during that time. Now, only two Games later, we have parity in medal events.

The Games start start Tuesday and run til April 15 in Australia’s Gold Coast.

 

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