Women a majority of Brazil’s 2024 Olympians

The Brazilian Report is launching a live blog to follow the 2024 Olympics in Paris, with an obvious focus on Brazil and other Latin American countries. We will bring you some of the main sporting event results, as well as fun facts regarding athletes, delegations, and the buzz around the games.

Paris 2024 will mark the first time Brazil sends a female-majority delegation. There will be 153 Brazilian female and 120 male athletes at the games — with women accounting for 55 percent of the total. The previous record was set in Athens 2004, when women represented 49 percent of the Brazilian delegation.

Women are more represented in the Brazilian delegation than in the overall landscape of the games. The International Olympic Committee (IOC) had set a goal of 50-50 gender parity — although the most recent numbers suggest that it may fall short of the goal. Women were first allowed to participate in the Olympics in Paris in 1900.

According to the IOC, 28 of the 32 sports are “fully gender equal.” Still, there are 157 men’s events — against 152 women’s events and 20 mixed-gender events.

The U.S. has more female Olympians than any other country (338), while Guam and Nicaragua are the most female-heavy delegations (87 and 86 percent of their teams).

Since the 1960s, female participation in Brazilian Olympic teams has been on a steady rise, marking significant progress in sports and gender equality. However, gender gaps still persist.

Per a Unesco report, women are twice as likely to drop sports by the age of 14 than their male counterparts — due to the imposition of social norms, the lack of safe spaces for women, and a lack of investment in female sports programs.

But despite the glaring disadvantages, women won nine of Brazil’s 21 medals in the Tokyo 2020 Games (which were held in 2021, due to the Covid pandemic) — including three of Brazil’s seven gold medals.

In Paris, female athletes are among the country’s biggest hopes for a gold medal, including skateboarder Rayssa Leal (who won silver in Tokyo at age 13), boxer Beatriz Ferreira (silver in Tokyo), beach volleyball duo Duda and Ana Patrícia, as well as several former gold medalists: sailing duo Martine Grael and Kahena Kunze, marathon swimmer Ana Marcela Cunha, and gymnast Rebeca Andrade.

Some pieces of legislation try to narrow the gap between male and female athletes. A bill sitting in the Senate’s drawers would forbid public money to finance sporting events that do not award equal prizes for both women’s and men’s competitions.

In 2023, Congress passed a bill ensuring that pregnant and postpartum women would not lose public funding as they temporarily step down from their sporting activities. So far, female athletes account for 44 percent of athletes receiving federal aid.

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