Paris 2024: Athletes say work isn't over after Olympics reaches gender parity
Women athletes taking part in a fashion show in Paris to mark gender parity at the Olympics welcomed the Games reaching that milestone but said more work needs to be done to improve working conditions, pay, and visibility of women in sports.
Former and current athletes including beach volleyball gold medallist Natalie Cook, New Zealand BMX racer Sarah Walker, and US middle-distance runner Athing Mu walked the catwalk in T-shirts with slogans like "Parity Paris" and "I Am".
Paris 2024 is the first Olympics in which an equal number of men and women are competing overall, but the split still varies widely by country and by sport. Paris is also where women first took part in the Olympics, in 1900, when the 22 participating women accounted for just 2 percent of the total.
"Honestly there needs to be more work done to protect women in sports," Ebony Morrison, who will represent Liberia in the 100-metre hurdles, told Reuters in an interview.
"We're dealing with the outfits that we wear, the harassment online, sometimes we're not in safe spaces with the people that are supposed to be there to help us, like our doctors, our coaches, so there really needs to be more done," she added.
