Women in the Olympic and Paralympic Movements: Framing, Bureaucracy, and Advocacy in Periods of Change

Women in the Olympic and Paralympic Movements: Framing, Bureaucracy, and Advocacy in Periods of Change Madeleine Pape Department of Sociology University of Wisconsin-Madison, United States of America [email protected] Final report for the IOC Olympic Studies Centre PhD Students Research Grant Programme 2016 Award March 2017 CONTENTS Abstract ………………………………………………………….….… 3 Keywords ………………………………………………………..….… 3 Executive Summary ………………………………………………… 4 Research Report …………………………………………………….. 5 Introduction ……………………………………………….…… 5 Research Objectives …………………………………..…...… 7 Academic Significance …………………………………..…… 7 Impact on the Olympic Movement …………………….….… 8 Methodology …………………………………………………... 9 Findings ………………………………………………………... 11 Part I: The IOC and Women in the Olympic Movement ...... 11 Framing: Embodying Gender Equality, Leading with Best Practices …………………………………………. 11 Reconfiguring a Gendered Olympic Bureaucracy … 18 Advocates for Women’s Olympic Participation ……. 27 Part II: The IPC and Women in the Paralympic Movement 31 Framing: Gender and Elitism in the Paralympic Movement ……………………………………………... 31 Reconfiguring A Gendered Paralympic Bureaucracy 37 Advocates for Women’s Paralympic Participation … 43 Conclusion …………………………..………………………..……… 45 References …………………………..…………………..…………… 46 Appendices …………………………..……………….……...………. 49 2 ABSTRACT The participation of women as athletes and leaders in the Olympic and Paralympic Movements is characterized by varying degrees of representation. In this historical, comparative, and sociological study I examine why this is the case. Drawing on archival material collected at three sites and interviews with past and present leaders and employees in the two Movements, I consider the role of the peak governing bodies – the International Olympic Committee and International Paralympic Committee – in shaping trajectories of women’s participation as athletes and leaders. Taking gender as embedded in the discourses, practices, actions and relationships that comprise organizations, I find key differences across the two Movements in terms of how the two forms of women’s participation were situated and addressed. In the Olympic Movement, women’s representation among Movement leaders was depoliticized relative to their participation as athletes, which in turn shaped the framing, bureaucratic location, and advocacy of the issue. While similar patterns were visible in the Paralympic Movement, women’s participation here was further shaped by the presence of disability as an axis of difference that stratifies sport and produces additional barriers for women, particularly athletes, but with implications for leadership as well. KEYWORDS gender; sport; governance; bureaucracy; disability; organizations 3 EXECUTIVE SUMMARY This report compares the historical trajectories of women’s participation as athletes and leaders in the Olympic and Paralympic Movements. Through a historical, comparative, and sociological analysis of women’s participation in the two Movements, focused in particular on the actions of the IOC and IPC, I seek to provide explanations for why women’s representation among Olympic leaders continues to lag behind rates of women’s participation in Olympic sports, and to consider why these dynamics of representation and inclusion are different again in the Paralympic Movement. More broadly, this report contributes a new perspective to the literature on women’s representation in political and corporate leadership, extending academic understanding of the divergence between women’s base-level participation and their representation in positions of leadership and decision-making. In this report I draw primarily on archival materials held at the Olympic Studies Centre in Lausanne, Switzerland, the IPC Documentation Centre in Bonn, Germany, and the Stoke Mandeville Games collection in Aylesbury, United Kingdom (UK). In addition, I incorporate material from interviews with 14 individuals formerly or currently involved in the Olympic and Paralympic Movements. The time periods investigated in the present study are, loosely, 1967-1995 for the Olympic Movement, and 1980-2003 for the Paralympic Movement. These two periods represent eras of change in which the activities and actions of the IOC and IPC (and its predecessors) led to key actions and policies related to women’s participation as either athletes or leaders. Based on the above data and methods, I identify three areas where key differences arose: framing, bureaucracy, and advocacy. Under the theme of “framing” I address how women’s participation emerged as an organizational issue, including how it was framed in relation to the global gender equality and women’s movement. Under “bureaucracy” I consider how the rules and practices of the IOC and IPC developed over time and impacted the two forms of women’s participation. Finally, under advocacy I examine the role of key individuals and organizations, including IFs and female athletes themselves, in shaping how women’s participation developed over time. In sum, I find that across the Olympic and Paralympic Movements, women athletes and leaders were differently framed, differently situated relative to organizational rules and procedures, and advocated for by different groups and individuals. In the Olympic Movement, women’s leadership was depoliticized relative to women’s athletic participation, with the latter framed more strongly in terms of gender equality and anti-discrimination, addressed more explicitly through IOC rules and procedures, and supported through both grassroots and top-down collective advocacy. In the Paralympic Movement, the intersection of gender and disability led to specific bureaucratic and framing challenges for women, which were exacerbated by pressures on the Movement to professionalize. As a result, women’s leadership emerged as key to women’s greater athletic participation and to a much greater extent than in the Olympic Movement. Taken together, these historical insights provide explanations for the contemporary variation visible across these four forms of women’s participation and may inform policy and advocacy efforts to address remaining imbalances. 4 WOMEN IN THE OLYMPIC AND PARALYMPIC MOVEMENTS: FRAMING, BUREAUCRACY, AND ADVOCACY IN PERIODS OF CHANGE INTRODUCTION “It would seem that misogynism is endowed with longevity and a high ability to adapt itself to the circumstances. Having been beaten flat on the stadium, it has entrenched itself into another point of the front line, into a place less noisy and less spectacular. It has fled to the headquarters.” – Lia Manoliu, Varna Congress, 1973. At the 2016 Rio Olympic Games, women for the first time represented over 45% of “able-bodied” athletes, signalling the progress made by the IOC and other organizations in the Olympic Movement towards achieving parity of participation among men and women (IOC, 2016). Yet amidst the celebrations, a glimpse of a more complex account of gender in international sport can be seen. In the Paralympic Games that followed, a considerably lower proportion of athletes were women.1 Men continue to dominate the governance of the Olympic and Paralympic Movements, with women comprising 23% of IOC and 20% of IPC members in 2015. Rather than gender parity, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) has been committed to the target of 20% for women’s participation in governance, which was only revised in 2016 to 30% and brought in line with the parallel target of the International Paralympic Committee (IPC). In short, women’s participation and representation in the Olympic and Paralympic Movements – as athletes and as leaders – has followed four distinct trajectories, each varying in its distance from gender parity. This project asks how this unevenness of women’s inclusion is the product of the particular histories of the Olympic and Paralympic Movements. Representing two separate yet related transnational institutional configurations, there are likely both similarities and differences in the gendered histories of these two movements, yet the two Movements have not yet been subjected to a historical and comparative gender analysis. Moreover, questions remain within each Movement about the systematic character of gender inequalities, how they express themselves at multiple organizational levels, and how have they have been contested and reconfigured over time. This project seeks to uncover the historical foundations for the four trajectories of women’s participation outlined above, and consider how these emerged historically through the actions and decisions of the peak governing bodies in each Movement, the IOC and IPC. Drawing on archival and interview material, this historical project builds on existing scholarship by bringing a sociological, comparative, and organizational perspective to the history of women’s inclusion in the Olympic and Paralympic Movements. Addressing the institutionalization of gender inequality within individual organizations requires attention to complex processes and sources of power and 1 At 38%, this was the highest proportion of women athletes seen at the Paralympic Games, improving on the 35% achieved in the previous Summer Games of 2012 (IPC, 2017). 5 inequality (Connell, 2005, 2009; Martin, 1994). As argued by Joan Acker (1990; 1992; 2000), gender relations are constructed in and through organizations in complex ways, operating at the levels of ideology, symbols, and organizational composition. In other words, an organization is gendered not only because of the way it differentially

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