Tell the Olympic Committee: Women Can Jump

For those of us with young children, nieces, cousins, friends, it's not easy to explain the appalling state of professional sports' treatment of female athletes globally.

"But why can't women play in major league baseball?" my eight-year-old daughter has asked me on more than one occasion. Will someone tell me how to answer that one without resorting to "because it's stupid, that's why" at some point in the conversation? It's the answer I'd give if my daughter asked me about this latest story of international sexism, sports, and snow.

Women ski jumpers have been fighting to be recognized by the International Olympic Committee (IOC) as the athletes they are and demanding to be included in the 2014 Winter Olympics to be held in Sochi, Russia. Astoundingly, ski jumping is the only activity in the Olympic Winter Games that does not allow women to compete. Yes, you read that right. It doesn't allow women to compete.

It's why Change.org member Sarah Nelson created a petition which over two hundred Change.org members have already signed, to request equal opportunity for women at the 2014 Oympic games.

Given that over 130 women from 16 nations are registered with the International Ski Federation (FIS), and that 35 of those women have placed within the top ten of the FIS Continental Cup, it can hardly be that women ski jumpers aren't as talented as their male counterparts. Or that they can't fly with the best of them. Lindsey Van, a woman, set the record for women and men on the hill used for the Vancouver 2010 Olympic ski jumping event prior to the Olympics. Then she was promptly shut out of competing in the actual games.

Yet, according to the Ms. Magazine blog, when the executive board of the IOC met in Acapulco, Mexico, just weeks ago to discuss adding new events to the 2014 Winter Olympics, the most they could muster in response to the women ski jumpers request was, essentially, "we'll see." You know what that means when you hear those words from a parent or person in a position of authority, don't you? It means a procrastinating "no."

The answer is simply not good enough. Especially when, as Change.org Women's Rights editor, Alex DiBranco, writes, "Female ski jumpers have been trying to get this changed for years, and keep getting told: next time."

Just prior to the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver, Canada, a judge found evidence of gender discrimination in the way the women ski jumpers were treated by the IOC, yet, in an ironic twist, the judge also ruled that the IOC was not governed by Canada's anti-discrimination laws so ... it was back to "maybe next time, ladies."

Change.org member Sarah Nelson is asking us all to speak up on behalf of women ski jumpers. Tell the International Olympic Committee that keeping women ski jumpers from competing is sexist and wrong. What do they tell  their daughters when they ask why women can't jump?

Photo credit: Simon Aughton