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Abstract

Research on participation and medal winning at the Olympics has historically focused on economic indicators such as GDP or population size. The use socioeconomic indicators such gender equality to study female success at the Olympics is a recent development in the field of Olympic research. This paper expands on this research and looks at the effects of barriers to entry such as equipment costs and facility costs on the success of women of various nations at the Olympics. The paper tests the hypothesis that sports with the highest barriers to entry will have lower participation and medal-winning rates at the Olympics for women. The findings show that as barriers to entry increase the proportion of female athletes in a given sport, for a given country, in a given year, decreases. This can also be seen to a lesser extent in the proportion of medals won by female athletes. This indicates that female athletes are not getting the same training and competition opportunities as their male counterparts. The hope with this research is that it will provide a framework and direction for the IOC and other stakeholders in the years following the conclusion of the IOC’s flagship program Agenda 2020. It also seeks to offer a more complete understanding of the inequalities that women face in sport with the hopes of increasing female participation in sports.

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