Women In Sports

What is the first image that comes to mind when you think of sports? Maybe a famous footballer, or a muscly body builder, or an athlete at the Olympics, all men of course. Sports have always been dominated by men. We all know Usain Bolt, Ronaldinho, Tiger Woods and many more. But what about women?

Women have actually always taken part in the sports world since it first began. However, they rarely get the recognition they deserve. Women have always been regarded as delicate and weak in the past. They were actually withheld from indulging in any athletics. As the years passed, they began to fight this stereotype and engage in sports and every field they can get into. It took courage as well as undeniable skills for women to overcome the suffocating roles imposed on them. In honor, of International Women’s Day, we decided to shed the light on women’s history in sports and how they established themselves within the sports community.

Over the past decades, Women began to cement their place in all the sports fields. They weren’t always involved in all the major sports tournaments and they didn’t even have tournaments of their own. Since the beginning of history, sports have always been associated with martial training and the team games were developed to improve the teamwork between all the soldiers and troops. That doesn’t discard the fact that women still took place in sports across all history, they just didn’t participate in them competitively. In ancient Egypt, women enjoyed playing ball games and swimming. Similarly, women in ancient Greece participated in wrestling, horse-racing and so on. They even had their own miniature version of the Olympics dedicated to the Greek goddess Hera.

Over the next thousands of years, people’s mentality towards sports regressed to a point where sports became a masculine activity reserved for men and boys only. Women’s only purpose was to be as domestic as can be, with very minimal exceptions. It all began to change with the beginning of the 20^th century. The first ever modern Olympics didn’t allow any women to participate. Nonetheless, a Greek women unofficially competed in the marathon as a protest. The next one in 1990 had 22 women competing with men in some of the Olympic sports. This was the kickoff of women taking place in competitive sports events. It might come as a surprise that the first ever Olympics to have women competing in every sport was in 2012!

After finally having enough space in sports, we now have major athletes like  Serena Williams who won more Grand Slam titles than any other man or woman, and Yusra Mardini, whose story inspired thousands to pursue their passions. Sadly, women athletes are not as celebrated as their male counterparts. There are more women champions in nearly every sport than men, yet the most celebrated sports events are mostly for men.  We can only hope that women receive more acknowledgments and coverage for their victories and triumphs.  

There are so many facts and occurrences concerning women in sports history, it's not easy to sift through them all. We've done our best to give an accurate portrayal of the facts above and to provide a brief timeline of women in sports history.