The official Olympic broadcast service urged its cameraman to film female athletes appropriately. This has led to a conversation on sexism in sports against women.
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00:00Are women athletes being filmed differently than male athletes during the Olympics?
00:04Paris is the first ever Olympics to have an equal number of male and female athletes competing in the Games.
00:11This meant that sports in which women were competing received the same representation on television broadcasts as men,
00:18but there was still a problem.
00:19The CEO of the Olympic Broadcasting Services, which is the official broadcaster of the Games,
00:25admitted that female athletes were still filmed differently than men with the camera focusing on different parts of their body.
00:33Yanis Ixchous, the chief at the Olympic Broadcasting Services,
00:37said that he had warned camera operators, who were mostly male,
00:41to ensure that they framed female athletes appropriately and even updated filming guidelines.
00:46He said that there was an invisible bias and women athletes were not there because they were sexy or attractive,
00:53but because they were elite athletes.
00:55In some sports, the attire has also sparked conversation about sexism in sports.
01:00Up until two years ago, the bikini was the mandatory garment for women while playing beach volleyball,
01:06whereas men could opt for shorts and a tank top.
01:09In 2021, the Norwegian handball team was fined in the European tournament
01:14because they refused to play the sport with bikini bottoms.
01:17This year, many women opted for leggings or shorts while playing beach volleyball.
01:22One commentator was also fired during the 2024 Olympics
01:26after he made a sexist remark during the live broadcast of the women's freestyle swimming event.
01:31After the event, the male and female athletes were slowly leaving the arena
01:36when Bob Ballard, a commentator for Eurosport, said,
01:39you know how women are, hanging around, doing their makeup.
01:43His comment came under fire and he was fired from the network.
01:47In India, women have long alleged that their sport does not get equal coverage on television as compared to men.
01:54In 2024, chess player Divya Deshmukh spoke about her experience at an international chess tournament,
02:01where the spectators were more focused on her hair, clothes and her accent than her performance.
02:07It has been a long journey for equal representation at the Olympics.
02:11For context, there was a 2% participation of women in the 1900 Olympics in Paris as compared to 50% in 2024.