ABSTRACT
Every four years, athletes from all over the world participate in the most prestigious of international sports events-the Olympic Games-which, due to its high sociocultural profile, attracts vast audiences worldwide. Since the beginning of the modern Olympic movement right up to the present day the belief that men are more physically suited to sports has been used to justify women’s exclusion. Until his death in 1937, Baron Pierre de Coubertin, founder of the modern Olympics, was opposed to women’s participation because he considered it to be unnatural and unaesthetic (Hargreaves, 1994). He defined the Olympic Games as:
the solemn and periodic exaltation of male athleticism with internationalism as a base, loyalty as a means, art for its setting and female applause as reward.
