Summer Olympics: share of male and female athletes 1896-2020

The share of male athletes at the Summer Olympics has always been greater than the share of female athletes. The first modern Olympic Games in Athens in 1896 was exclusively for male competitors, and although some female events were introduced in Paris in 1900, the share of events was just 2.2 percent. Over the next century, the ratio of female to male events has gradually narrowed, and at a faster rate in recent decades, reaching almost 49 percent in Tokyo 2020. The Tokyo Games in particular saw the introduction of several mixed events, in an attempt to increase this participation further; these included mixed shooting events and both sprinting and swimming mixed relays.

Distribution of male and female athletes participating at the Summer Olympics from 1896 to 2020

Year	Male**	Female
Athens 1896	100%	0%
Paris 1900	97.8%	2.2%
St. Louis 1904	99.1%	0.9%
London 1908	98.2%	1.8%
Stockholm 1912	98%	2%
Antwerp 1920	97.6%	2.4%
Paris 1924	95.6%	4.4%
Amsterdam 1928	90.4%	9.6%
Los Angeles 1932	91%	9%
Berlin 1936	91.7%	8.3%
London 1948	90.5%	9.5%
Helsinki 1952	89.5%	10.5%
Melbourne 1956	86.7%	13.3%
Rome 1960	88.6%	11.4%
Tokyo 1964	86.8%	13.2%
Mexico City 1968	85.8%	14.2%
Munich 1972	85.4%	14.6%
Montreal 1976	79.3%	20.7%
Moscow 1980	78.5%	21.5%
Los Angeles 1984	77%	23%
Seoul 1988	73.9%	26.1%
Barcelona 1992	71.2%	28.8%
Atlanta 1996	66%	34%
Sydney 2000	61.8%	38.2%
Athens 2004	59.3%	40.7%
Beijing 2008	57.6%	42.4%
London 2012	55.8%	44.2%
Rio 2016	55%	45%
Tokyo 2020	51.2%	48.8%

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Release date

2021

More information

Region

Worldwide

Survey time period

1896 to 2021

Supplementary notes

**The source only provides data relating to the number of female athletes; the number of male athletes has been calculated by subtracting the female figures from 100.

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