Paris (France): The official Olympics broadcaster has urged camera operators to film male and female athletes in the same way to avoid “stereotypes and sexism” creeping into the coverage.
The Paris Olympics are the first in the 128-year history of the modern Games to reach gender parity among athletes, with women’s sport also given more prime-time broadcast spots to help raise its profile.
With the Games now in full swing, the head of Olympic Broadcasting Services (OBS) said his organisation had updated its guidelines for camera operators, most of whom are men. OBS is responsible for the TV coverage of the Olympics, with its images shared with rights holders around the world.
“Unfortunately, in some events they [women] are still being filmed in a way that you can identify that stereotypes and sexism remains, even from the way in which some camera operators are framing differently men and women athletes,” the OBS chief executive, Yiannis Exarchos, told reporters in Paris.
“Women athletes are not there because they are more attractive or sexy or whatever. They are there because they are elite athletes.”
He said the problem was mainly down to “unconscious bias”, with camera operators and TV editors tending to show more closeup shots of women than men.
A number of scheduling changes have been made by Olympics organisers in Paris to boost women’s sport. The women’s marathon is to be the final event of the Games instead of the men’s race.
“The schedules of sporting events have traditionally been biased towards highlighting men’s events,” Exarchos said. “Traditionally, in team sports, you have first women’s finals, and then the men’s final … In strength and combat sports, traditionally you have women’s competitions in the morning and men’s competitions in the afternoon.”
Marie Sallois, the director in charge of gender equality at the International Olympic Committee, said the Paris Games were “de facto the world’s largest platform to promote gender equality in and through sport”.
She pointed to “symbolic moments” in the opening ceremony on Friday, with almost all delegations having a male and a female flag carrier, while the artistic show paid tribute to influential women in French history.
When the ancient Greek Olympics concept was revived by the French aristocrat Pierre de Coubertin in the late 19th century, he saw it as a celebration of gentlemanly athleticism “with female applause as its reward”.
In 1924, the last time the Olympics were held in Paris, just 4% of competitors were women and they were restricted to sports considered “suitable” for them, such as swimming, tennis and croquet.
