Gender equality in sports continues to be a widely discussed topic.
It is important because it promotes fairness, and in its absence discrimination and injustice thrive.
Simply put, everyone deserves the same opportunity to succeed, and genuine sports gender equality gives equal opportunities for men and women to compete.
Financial Challenges: Gender Disparities in Sports Funding
A main obstacle in gender equality in sports is insufficient funding, as in most cases men’s disciplines are the ones to receive the bulk of sponsorship and TV rights fees.
Most businesses are unwilling to lend financial support to women’s sports, though others do so more out of a moral obligation and political correctness rather than for investment opportunities.
With that being said, track and field athletics is one of the sporting disciplines that has progressed to equal pay at an event like the World Athletics Championships currently being held inside the National Athletics Centre in Budapest.
Timetable Disparities: Unveiling Gender Bias in Athletics Scheduling
But gender equality is far more than just equal pay. It’s the total treatment of all the athletes.
This network couldn’t help but notice the vast differences in the timetables for the men’s and women’s 100m races, especially from the semi-finals to the finals.
The timetable for the World Athletics Championships Budapest 23 shows the men’s semi-finals being contested at 16:35 on Sunday, with the final being run at 19:10, two hours and 35 minutes later.
The first of the women’s semi-finals was run at 20:35 on Monday, with the final being run at 21:50 on the same day, a mere one hour and 15 minutes later.
That is one hour and 20 minutes more recovery time for the men. Two times what was allocated to the women. What could have been the rationale for this scheduling debacle?
In both cases of the men’s and women’s, the qualifiers from the third semi-finals would have even less time to recover for the final. But in this particularly bizarre case, these women would have less than an hour to recover for the final.
Why this alarming disparity between the two at this 19th edition of the World Athletics Championships? The athletes are the most important assets in these events because without them there would be no product to market and sell for millions of dollars.
Why have the women been treated so inhumanely at this meet with barely an hour to recover for the most explosive event?
Fair Play and Equal Opportunities
A brief research over the past couple of World Championships has shown that no other edition since 1915 has had such a short recovery time for the women. Probably none ever in the 40 year of the event.
In the last edition at Oregon 22, the first of the men’s semis was run at 18:00 on Saturday, July 16 with the final run at 19:50, an hour and 50 minutes later.
For the women, the first of their semi-finals was run at 17:33 on Sunday, July 17 with the final run at 19:50, two hours and 17 minutes later.
At the Doha 2019 edition, the first of the men’s 100m semis was run at 18:45 on Saturday, September 28, with the final contested at 22:15, three hours later.
For the women, the first of the semis was run at 21:20 on Sunday, September, with the final being run at 23:20, two hours later.
World Athletics Championships London 2017 saw the first of the men’s semis being run at 18:05 on August 5, with the final sent off at 20:45, some two hours and 40 minutes later.
The women’s equivalent had the first of the semis run at 18:10 on August 6, with the final sent off at 20:50, two hours and 40 minutes later.
The 15th World Athletics Championships in China 2015 had the men’s first semi-final being run off at 19:10 on August 23, with the final going off at 21:15, two hours and five minutes later.
The women’s first semi-final was sent off at 19:40 on August 24, with the final sent off at 21:35, an hour and 55 minutes later.
None had a recovery time difference between the genders as wide as the one the world witnessed on Monday, with the ladies being the unfortunate victims.
The organisers of the World Athletics Championships Budapest 23 need to provide an explanation, as anything less could be seen as another unnecessary obstacle in the fight against gender inequality.
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