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The Executive Board (EB) of the International Olympic Committee (IOC) today made two key decisions to draw even more attention to gender equality at the Olympic Summer Games, starting with Tokyo 2020.
“The Olympic Games Tokyo 2020 will be the first gender-balanced Olympic Games in history with 48.8 per cent women’s participation,” said IOC President Thomas Bach. “Today, the IOC EB also decided that there should be – for the first time ever – at least one female and one male athlete in every one of the 206 teams and the IOC Refugee Olympic Team participating at the Games of the Olympiad. Additionally, we have also changed the rules to allow National Olympic Committees to nominate a female and a male athlete to jointly bear their flag during the Opening Ceremony. We encourage all National Olympic Committees to make use of this option. With these two initiatives, the IOC is sending another extremely strong message to the world that gender balance is a reality at the Olympic Games,” Bach stressed.
