Abstract
Gender equality- or rather women’s rights- is often a heavily debated topic within today’s society. Progression in equality and rights has improved over the last few years, but to what extent? What do we define as equal and in what aspects? We’ll cover an analysis of gender equality, following a recent incident regarding two female boxers at the 2024 Paris Olympics from which a heated discussion over this has stemmed.
Paris Olympics 2024: Boxing Incident
The Olympics is a prestigious event where renowned and upcoming athletes compete from all over the world, countries big and small, to showcase their talents. In this, the struggle regarding societal value and challenges remains strong- issues such as drugs (doping) and gender equality being the highlight of many. This year, the biggest was regarding Algerian female boxer Imane Khelif.
Imane Khelif had just begun the match against Italian boxer Angela Carini for the quarterfinals, when 46 seconds in Carini surrendered. From reports, it was aid that Carini was In shock of the strength from the punch, saying she had never been hit like that before. This led to a controversy about Khelif’s gender, sparking responses from people such as J.K. Rowling, Elon Musk and Italy’s Prime Minister regarding the incident. The first thought was that Khelif was transgender- that possibly she was a man playing in a women’s category, leading her to an unfair advantage over the other contestants. However, this is false. Gender tests and thorough investigation has revealed that Khelif is indeed a female- “born female, was registered female, lived her life as a female, boxed as a female, has a female passport.” Before this Khelif faced a backlash of transphobic comments and online abuse from commentators, calling her “a man” smell because of an alleged physical advantage.
Prior to this, in 2023, at the IBA (International Boxing Associations) Championships, Khelif was disqualified after failing unspecified eligibility tests. Originally stated that she had too high of testosterone levels to compete, it was later said that “DNA tests ‘proved they had XY chromosomes.”‘ However these are still unspecified tests, making it still unclear as to what was specifically used to test Khelif, and to what standards it was done so. Despite this controversy, Khelif was allowed to compete during the 2024 Summer Olympics due to the IBA’s status being revoked due to “governance issues and perceived judging and refereeing corruption.” Furthermore, the IOC cleared Khelif to compete, stating she met all the necessary eligibility and medical regulations for the event. They even acknowledged receiving a letter from the IBA regarding Khelif’s test, and stated that the test was so flawed it was impossible to engage with.
My Understanding
To analyze the situation with the Olympics, I believe that Carini may have overreacted. As a boxer, it’s part of the sport to get hit. Not everyone will have the same strength. People Amy be put in the same weight category but they are still all different. Carini felt that she had never been punched that way, but shouldn’t that have been expected? Shouldn’t she have known that she would horribly be hit harder than used to? Or maybe it was altogether unexpected even with preparation. However, she also states that she there in the towel as she believed that she saw her Olympic dreams were crushed. With this, I feel like she should have kept fighting. She should have lost rather than give up. That was the moment she crushed her dreams. If she had kept fighting and lost, it would have been more respectable. I do respect her for understanding her limit, but simply throwing in the towel because the force was unknown and she knew her dreams would have been crushed doesn’t sit right with me. It’s as if she gave up. She didn’t even shake hands with Khelif, which is very rude. She should have shaken hands, it’s good sportsmanship. If she was possible frustrated or embarrassed about the match I understand, but I don;t think that should excuse her from displaying good sportsmanship. Furthermore, if the punch was that forceful, I feel like she could have tried to figure out a way to move around it. Play to her own strengths to avoid getting punched knowing how strong her opponent was. However, she denied to give up.
Furthermore, I don’t like how everyone suddenly jumped to the conclusion that Khelif was a man following the match. The immediate resort to hateful comments and abuse without even knowing then truth is awful. With a lack of information about someone, people online began to jump on the hate and falsely accuse her without even blinking.
To look at this further, why are people so pent up about the possibility of there being a a man fighting against a woman? Well, for imbalance reasons. Men often have a stronger physique and body type that makes them slightly stronger than females, giving them a bit of an advantage. With this, even if they were in the same weight category, it would still be different because of this body difference. With that, people often are against trans women in sports in women’s categories. However, to look at this further, people often claim for gender equality but what is so equal in sports where women only fight each other and trans women get backlash if they do. That’s not gender equality. To be equal to someone means that you are the same. If men and women were the same then why wouldn’t they fight each other? Because we are not the same and that should be accepted. Men and women are different, they will not be the same and you cannot define them as being equal with different parts or features. That is not what equal is. To say that we need gender equality is wrong, because the genders are not equal. Yes, we need same rights because we are all human and there should not be anything that denies one of that, but to say that is part of gender equality is wrong. We need to understand that we are not wanting gender equality, but rather respect or an understanding of each gender and giving them what they need to reach the same result. Maternal leave- for example. Maternal leave should be longer for women because they are the ones giving birth, right? Furthermore in sports, like Tennis, men’s competitions have 5 sets while women have 3.For that, it is often because women were believed to not be able to endure the physical stamina and ability to proceed with all five sets, and instead do three instead, With this, isn’t that understanding and responding to the needs of each gender while allowing them to have the same results?
Then why do some people believe that it’s an insult when things are different? When men get less maternal leave it is not seen as women being weak. They just need that extra time because their body is doing something different and they need time to recover from that. Furthermore men cannot complain about getting less time when they don’t work as hard as the women do during this time. In sports, men often will have longer matches or have greater winnings compared to women, but that’s because they’re playing longer and hitting a lot stronger compared to women. Women could do the same, but once again, we are all different. Body types and structure are different, and biologically it would be difficult for women to replicate the same performance given by men no matter what. It will be different, and that’s okay. We need to accept that not everything is the same, that it’s okay things are different and that being different doesn’t mean that they are not deserving of the same treatment. It just means that we need to cater to and respect the difference accordingly so that we can all end up being successful.
Final Thoughts
Carini could have won, or even lost, honorably through the fight. With the first blow from her opponent she old have known that they were much stronger than anyone else she had known, and she could have accepted that. She could have used that knowledge and worked around it- played to her strengths and fought her way through the match no matter how low her chances were. At least she would have tried, But by giving up 46 seconds in, simply saying she felt a sharp pain is upsetting. She gave up before she could actually try, and blamed it on Khelif- that is where she went wrong.
