There is this absolute parity. As historic as it is late. And there is this imbalance. Persistent. If France is proud to organise, in the summer of 2024, the Olympic and Paralympic Games, which, for the first time in one hundred and twenty-eight years, will bring together as many female athletes as male athletes, it must compose with a reality: in everyday sports practice, we are far from this 50-50.
In 2021, 37.8% of the 14.4 million licensees in a club were women. It was even 33% on average within the federations Olympic and 28% for non-Olympic sports (multi-sport federations show more balanced proportions). Enough to ” to worry “according to sports sociologist Béatrice Barbusse. “Feminine practice can’t take off”, adds the one who is also deputy vice-president of the handball federation.
Amélie Oudéa-Castéra says almost the same thing: “We must act so that the change is faster and deeper”declared the Minister of Sports and the Olympic and Paralympic Games during the Estates General of Women’s Sport, organized in January by the city of Bourges, the Alice Milliat Foundation and the magazine Sporting. For “revive”it will bring together, on March 6, federations, sports, media…
An air of deja vu? In 1999, Marie-George Buffet, Minister for Youth and Sports, during national “Women and Sport” conferencespromised “to print [dans le sport] an advance commensurate with the place that women have acquired in society”. In 2011, Michèle André (Socialist Party), on behalf of the Women’s Rights Delegation of the Senatecalled for the initiation of a “voluntary policy” for’“expand and improve women’s access to physical and sporting activities”. “Marie-George Buffet, it was not just talk, but the context did not lend itself to it gaining momentum”raises Mme Barbusse, recalling that the obligation imposed, in 2013, on the federations to present a feminization plan did not lead “over nothing”. “And it is no longer mandatory since 2017”, she continues, acknowledging nevertheless ” some progress “.
Slow progress
“There has been a gradual accession of women to sports practice”confirms Alain Tourdjman, director of research and forecasting at Groupe BPCE, who cites a number of licensees up 12% between 2012 and 2019 – before a decline of 22% between 2019 and 2021 due to Covid-19.
These numbers don’t tell the whole story. Because the practice outside the federal framework has developed, in free form in the public space, or in private structures (fitness rooms for example). However, it is not quantified.
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