Equality in sport: the athletes who made the difference

Ci are athletes who The eyes are changing with which you look at women’s sport. “By Sara Simeoniwhich in July 1978 became the first woman in the world to overcome the two -meter wall in the upper jump, to the American gymnastics champion Simone Biles, who in September 2021 denounced systematic harassment for sport for the first time, Athletes pioneer trace roads that were not there before, for the benefit of all the others: they do so through their competitive action, the narrative that of them make the media or claims they themselves push “says Alessia Tuselli, sociologist of the center of gender interdisciplinary studies of the University of Trento and co -author of the essay Sports, the match of equality (Erickson editions).

According to Tuselli, Female sport begins to really exist with that leap of the Simeoniwhen newspapers and TV build a scene, next to that of Pietro Mennea. And, with her, the scene of the women’s sport gains: Manuela Di Centa, Deborah Compagnoni, Fiona May, Valentina Vezzali, Federica Pellegrini, Bebe Vio, Paola Egonu, Federica Brignone, will arrive.

Equality in sport, the power of the purple lipstick

Of course, between Simeoni’s record and Biles’ reporting 40 years deep mutations, years along which sports women have also trained to build empowerment, self -determination, ambition of demanding rights and equal, as women have done out of there. We have succeeded in understanding gestures that went down in history, not only the sporting one: for example, to take the field with a purple blood lipstick on the mouth.

Marta Vieira da Silva, called Marta, striker of the Brazilian national teamone of the strongest footballers ever, he brings him during the match against Italy of the 2019 World Cup, which Brazil must win at any cost: lipstick absorbs world media curiosity and, after the meeting is over, Marta will explain that that Gothic color had chosen it as a symbolto say herself that she and companions would have left the blood on the ground in order to win.

Warrior mothers

Another scene, another media roar: Roland Garros 2018, this time to take the field, wearing a Catwoman Total Black suit with red belt, is Serena Williams. It is part of a complex motherhood, The suit is anticoagulant, but it is too much for the total white dogma of tennisthat the bubble as unaruding, but the following year he will allocate the penalty.

Williams will say that when he wears that suit he feels like a warrior princess And he explains that the suit “represents all the mothers out there that have had a difficult pregnancy and must return and demonstrate that they are strong”. Marta and Serena Williams are part of that generation of athletes who clarify to every gesture which world want to live.

Equality in sport, every gesture matters

Of them, but not only of them, speaks Fundamental (the publisher is 66thand2nd), A five -itey book edited by Giorgia Bernardini. «Marta’s lipstick or Serena’s Catsuit tell us about athletes who have put on their shoulders not only the individual or team company, but that of women’s sport in a wider way »says Elena Marinelli, who is the author of the chapter entitled, not surprisingly, Icon.

«They are part of an economic and marketing system, but they know that Any of their business on the field also has an effect that projects elsewhere: it is a cultural effect. Taking that commitment, they will bring him the entire career forward. Of course, there are many athletes that this commitment does not take it: it is not of all, and it is right that it is so ».

Carrying out a cause, a common goal means for athletes to put their body at the center of the scene. Sport, as well as its rules, is designed for male and female bodies are due in one way or another to arrange, until something revolutionary happens that opens a gash forever.

Equality in sport: the broken taboo of the cycle

Munich 2022European Athletics Championships: LA British Sprinter Dina Asher-Smith breaks the taboo of the menstrual cycle in the race. Stopping from a cramp linked to menstruation, it publicly asks that more scientific research is made on the impact they have on competitive performances. The cycle becomes great news!

Revolution in Tennis Ibiza 2023, European Open of Triathlon: still a British champion, Emma Pallant-Browne, through social media, encourages the media to publish without retouching the photo that portrays her while competing with the pink and blue-stained blue body. “An image can be much more powerful than a thousand words” He declares and opens a public, crystalline and clear conversation, on the cycle: his is super abundant, a real trouble if it happens on the day of the race tells – but it is a natural fact, all the athletes make us accounts, just be ashamed and hide it. In short, he launches the stone in the tin because it also reaches the girls, who stop going on the athletic fields and in the pool to the appearance of the cycle.

The trajectory also takes the destination of Wimbledon, kingdom of Immaculate White: in November 2022, revolutionizing a principle that resists since 1877the organization gives green light to dark -colored shorts. It is that even the world of sport fails to be outside the right reasons of the girls.

A few months pass and the women’s football world championship in Australia and New Zealandwon by Spain, the power of sexist prejudices under the eyes of the planet. This time it is the male chauvinism that is self -repriation directly: in the award ceremony, The president of the Spanish Football Federation Luis Rubiales Kiss the footballer Jennifer Hermoso on his mouthwho will declare that he felt lack of respect in a profound way: “My boss kissed me, which should not happen in any working relationship”.

The Spanish #Metoo of football, and not only of football, triggersthe hashtag #Seacabó flies, a great “now enough!”: the sport comes out of sport and is firm to the incandescent question, which has become political from private, of consent in relationships.

Tedophores in history

At one point it is the same international Olympic Committee, the maximum sports governance, to demand that sport wakes up and faces page, which began to close the gaps between athletes and athletes, waiting for on a legendary day – actually this March – the first woman, Forty -year -old Kirsty Coventry, gold medal in Athens 2004 and Beijing 2008 In the 200 swimming back, it is elected to the presidency, interrupting 131 years yarns of male power.

And, moreover, already in 2024 the Paris Olympic Games had officially introduced full gender equality Making the same number of men and women compete: the lively image of the two tedophores that light the brazier of the start of games – for the first time a woman and a man – makes history. But if the images can become strong feelings, the words, the right ones, they do it even more. The first national research on the media coverage of the Olympic and Paralympic games of Paris 2024 seen from a gender perspective that conducted the Pavia Observatory (independent research institute specialized in the analysis of the media) has focused an interesting turning point.

Equality in sport: language is fundamental

The study says, promoted by the International Olympic Committee and by the Bracco Foundation, which The journalistic media have fairly covered female sports (51 percent) and male sports (49 percent)as well as athletes and athletes was likely to be made visible (49 percent the visibility of the athletes, 51 percent of the athletes), and it is an excellent result, because it is strange that the more a sport it is showed, the more people practice it and the more investments grow the more they grow it, which is then the eternal harmful circle of women’s sport.

“In reality, this quantitative result of parity – excellent – we expected a little, since the Olympic games have long received adequate coverage also of the disciplines of women” he explains Monia Azzalini, the researcher at the Pavia Observatory who edited the study. “On the qualitative level, even more interesting innovations emerged: the analysis of the language used by the media reveals that the habit of defining the athletes through female forms, see the boxer, the champion, has been introduced … language contributes decisively to making things happen: Saying “footballer” means giving substance and value to that role, means making a girl who can finally become so too. If that activity is not even named in words, he will never dream of playing football ».

The project for Milan Cortina 2026

Moreover: When making a narration without stereotypes, the sport of girls explodes: See what happened to women’s football in the United States, England, Spain. «In Italy, unfortunately, He still resists a type of story that often removes technicality from female strongism, which weakens him by putting in the foreground sentimental or family aspects, Which still deprives the athletes of the surname in favor of the name alone, depriving them in this way of the recognition of authority and professionalism. And, in any case, to get out of the cone of the shadow of media attention, women must carry out great companies “says Alessia Tuselli, who is also a trainer in the” 21 stages for gender equity in Italian sport “, promoted by Coni and Milan Cortina 2026.

“The goal of women’s sports must become the constant story: we must overcome the narration of the exceptionalism and the first time of a woman or a team of women in a world of men, because Only in this way the multitude of athletes who now remain outside the gaze of the media and the public will be visible and recognized»Elena Marinelli closes who, in 2021, together with Giorgia Bernardini launched the Podcast Goleadora to follow the Italian Serie A, the Champions League, the national team.

“Telling in the right way means telling the athletes in the world in which they act, which is made of training, victories and defeats, technique, tactics, but also money, wages, premiums, sponsorships, investments”.

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