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Female Paralympic athletes scarce
By Brady Snyder
Deseret News staff writer
The Paralympics aren't as inclusive as they could be, particularly when it comes to women.
Of the 416 athletes competing at Salt Lake's 2002 Winter Paralympics, a meager 21 percent are women. If sled hockey — an all male sport — is thrown out, the statistic rises — but only to 28 percent.
They are figures that many say must change.
"We need to identify the reason why we have these low percentages," said Gundrun Doll-Tepper, the president of the International Council of Sport Science and Physical Education, Tuesday. "We have been looking for answers about why we have so few women competing."
But answers have been in short supply.
In a search for clues, the International Paralympic Committee has commissioned focus group studies of female athletes in Salt Lake to discover what restricts them on the road to elite competition.
Among the answers coming back are lack of money from corporate sponsors and a shorter career span than men, said Carol Mushett, IPC technical officer and chairman of the IPC sport council.
But there are seemingly other, unknown factors.
Disabled women, Doll-Tepper said, often compete at the recreational level but drop out before reaching elite competition and nobody seems to know why.
"We not only need to recruit them; what is also a function is we have to keep them," she said. "It's very difficult to keep these women and have them stay with a recreation program."
Some countries do a better job cultivating women than others.
The United States, which has been criticized by University of Utah health professor John Dunn and others for not having world-class programs for disabled athletes, does well in recruiting women when compared to the rest of the world.
Including sledge hockey, 28 percent of U.S. Paralympians are women. Sledge hockey aside, the number balloons to 38 percent.
Canada's delegation, with sledge hockey included, is only 15 percent female. Without sledge hockey, the team is 33 percent women.
Austria, which doesn't have a sledge hockey team, is 18 percent female; Germany, also with no sledge hockey squad, is 19 percent. The numbers aren't much better for Switzerland, 11 percent; Russia, 27 percent; or Italy, 8 percent.
The IPC is taking steps to change those numbers.
The body requires that half of all development money it doles out be spent on women and it mandates that countries entering "wild-card" athletes enlist an equal number of men and women, Mushett said.
The organization, which lacks female leadership, is also seeking athletes that can move into directional roles after their competition stints, Mushett said.
Despite these internal measures, progress has been slow and the percentages of women competing in Salt Lake isn't higher than it was in Nagano, Japan, four years ago.
"We did not see the significant improvement between Nagano and here that I would have liked to have seen," Mushett said. "It needs to be more of a priority."
U.S. Nordic sit-skier Robert Balk says disabled women's sports are like what able bodied women's sport were 20 years ago, and he expects rapid growth in the coming decades.
There is room for growth.
In the women's cross country relay, the United States had just enough athletes to field a three-member team for the competition, which consisted of only four squads, meaning only the last place team — the U.S. — didn't medal.
By comparison, the men's cross country relay had 12 teams, and Germany even placed two squads.
"I would certainly not concede that it's always going to be like this," Mushett said. "I'm optimistic that the internal initiatives under way will assist us in making progress but I'm not naive. It's not going to happen on its own."
Contributing: Jesse Hyde
E-MAIL: bsnyder@desnews.com
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March 15, 2002
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