Women and Sport

Women have historically taken part in sports for many centuries. The first recorded female game competitions were the Herean Games in approximately 1,000 BC, named after the Goddess Hera. Held at Olympia in Greece, these games were for women alone and were thought to have originated as part of ancient fertility rights.(1) Historically there is evidence of sporting activities involving women, but nothing of significance until after the 1948 summer Olympic Games, when 385 female athletes participated. Over the last six decades there has been a noted rise in the number of female athletes, reaching its maximum with the 2008 Beijing Olympics, where over 42% of the 11,028 athletes were women.(2) Similarly in 2006, at the Turin Winter Olympics in Italy, 40% of the 2,500 athletes were females. In the 2012 Olympics, the Olympic Committee anticipates that approximately 44% of all athletes participating will be female. Despite there being a significant rise in the number of elite athletes in the UK, there appears to be an overall decrease in the amount and intensity of physical exercise undertaken by teenage girls. This is considered to be due to the fact that physical education is no longer an integral part of the school curriculum in the UK. There is, however, a small but significant group of elite athletes who start to train at a very early age (9-10 years old) especially in gymnastics, skating, swimming and athletics.