Introduction.
“There is no excuse for perpetuating the blatant sexism that persists at the Games.Not only do women compete in only 21 sports while men take part in 27, but the program of events in most sports has fewer events for women. At the Olympics women do kayaking, but for inexplicable reasons, they don’t canoe. Male paddlers do both.”
~ Abby Hoffman, four time Olympian, sports administrator, athlete/women’s rights activist (as quoted in the Ottawa Citizen, in reference to the 1996 Olympic Games).
It has been sixteen years since Ms. Hoffman made those observations and although many issues for women’s involvement at the highest level of sport have been resolved, many more still remain. A flawed process for inclusion, a lack of leadership at the top, varying degrees of acceptance within our sport, and incorrect perceptions of and unclear guidance for Olympic readiness all contribute to an increasingly frustrating situation for female canoe athletes. Top paddlers continue to quit the sport or switch to other sports because they see no potential for women’s canoe Olympic inclusion within their athletic careers.
Background. Women have been interested in training and racing Olympic-style canoe since before it was included in the Olympics as exhibition in 1924. In the culture of these early years, perhaps it was felt it was too difficult for women to maneuver a canoe. Maybe it was just not considered an attractive thing for women to do. For decades women have had to fight the deeply ingrained and very cultural, however incorrect myth that unilateral canoeing would cause infertility by damaging reproductive organs as well as resulting in lopsided breast development. But, fast forward to 2012. Women are competing (or are scheduled to compete – e.g., ski jumping) in every Olympic sport and almost every Olympic discipline – except canoe. When you consider that you can take an athletic youth of about 13 years old with little or no exposure to any given sport and turn them into an Olympian in about a decade, why are women still denied their chance to compete at the highest levels of our sport almost a hundred years after its introduction to the Olympics? Unless the current process is altered, it appears that gender equality for women’s sports – women’s canoe in particular – will not come any time soon.
The Status. Women’s sprint and slalom canoe are ready for Olympic inclusion in 2016. In a press release issued on November 20, 2012, the ICF indicated that while it will lobby the IOC to include a women’s slalom canoe event for Rio in 2016, the sprint women will have to wait until 2020 or later to have their opportunity, stating “The ICF would like to point out that on a global scale, few National Federations are developing the Women’s Canoe category in the Canoe Sprint discipline whereas much progress is being made in the development of the Women’s Canoe category in Canoe Slalom.” (Note – on November 22, 2012 the link to this press release was removed by the ICF from its website, with no explanation). While we are very excited for the decision regarding slalom canoe and we know that women’s slalom will be a fantastic show in Rio, this statement is bewildering considering that the 2010 and 2011 ICF Sprint World Championships saw 20 countries participating in women’s canoe, as compared to Slalom’s 16. And there are approximately 37 countries in total now competing in or developing women’s sprint canoe, with more nations interested and seeking assistance after only two years as an official event on the World Championships program. This number of countries is higher than those developing women’s slalom canoe and it is about half the number of countries that participated in the men’s kayak events at the 2011 Sprint World Championships, which was the main Olympic qualification event for London 2012.
Most would consider this kind of growth remarkable considering that men’s kayak has been supported and promoted for over 80 years in contrast to women’s canoe, which is still often unsupported by federations and which has been promoted by the ICF for only the past 4 years. Women’s sprint canoe has demonstrated solid participation and quality at World and Continental Championships, is experiencing explosion of interest worldwide, and this year’s announcement by the IOC that they will add both sprint and slalom women’s canoe events to the 2014 Youth Olympic Games brings expectations of continued growth. Recently PASO, the Pan American Sports Organization, after much lobbying, announced the addition of one sprint and one slalom women’s canoe event to the programme of the 2015 Pan American Games to be held in Canada. This was certainly a welcome decision, but the new events could also be construed as merely tokens. Women’s canoe has been contested at the Pan American Canoe Sprint Championships since 2001 where, like men’s canoe, it currently has 5 events. Previously, one of the primary reasons given for exclusion to the Pan American Games was that women’s canoe is not an Olympic event, so it is interesting to note that there are a number of sports (e.g., Bowling, Racquetball, Squash and Water Skiing) on the programme which are not Olympic sports.
The Flawed Process. Equality wording in official charters is powerless and meaningless when the members can simply continue to vote against full inclusion for as long as it suits them. In my years of advocating for women’s canoe I have noted a pattern for women in sport in general: Female athletes are encouraged by promises of equality enshrined in the charters of all levels of sporting organizations. But the process for achieving that equality has never been defined. As members vote to amend charters, statutes and
constitutions for sporting organizations with equality terminology, they seem to overlook the fact that what equality essentially means is the actual adding of women’s events to the schedule. These additions result in extra time required for competitions and extra expense for both organizers and participants. When women start asking for the equality they were promised – equal events – the process begins to break down. In accordance with the typical rules for adding events to the programs – rules which were never updated to correspond with equality promises in the charters – the members of the organizations participate in votes to decide whether or not they are going to include the requested events. Predictably, lively debate ensues, alternating between lack of available time or money and quantity and/or quality of competitors. The result generally does not turn out in favor of the women. Sometimes the motion does not even reach the floor in anticipation of lack of support. This is the scenario that plays out year after year, quadrennial after quadrennial for women of sport – particularly at the International Federation level. Sprint women canoeists currently have only 2 events at the World Championships compared to 9 events for each of men’s canoe, men’s kayak and women’s kayak. No motions for increasing the number of events for the women were presented at the recent 2012 ICF Congress.
Leadership. Event caps and athlete quotas that were imposed on Olympic sports without first allowing the opportunity to properly equalize the programme seem to be at the heart of the problem when trying to achieve equality. There is politically correct equality wording in the Olympic Charter but a glance at the Olympic Programme Commission report suggests a superficial assessment of an International Federation’s (IF) gender equality status. International Federations are expected to sort out gender equality issues in light of the Olympic caps and quotas and that places them in a very difficult position. Because there is a perception of a constant threat of being ‘tossed’ out of the popular Summer Games, IFs are understandably reluctant to complain too much. The majority of funding for the ICF comes from Olympic revenues (Report on the 26 Core Sports of the XXXI Olympiad, 2009). At the same time, tension is generated within the sport as the caps and quotas imply that in order to satisfy the women’s equality issue, men will have to lose events.
Sprint, a sport that has potential to appeal to a wide range of athletic tastes and abilities, uses 6 different types of equipment – both individual and team boats raced over 4 distances – yet Olympic viewers will never see the majority of these events due to IOC event caps nor will they even see a representative depth of competition due to IOC athlete quotas. Decisions to cut current well established events to make way for women canoeists are not easy for a sport organization already dealing with such gross under-representation; however they must still be addressed. Furthermore, with no clear definition by sport leadership as to what constitutes equality or what warrants inclusion (a discussion for another article), many possible scenarios emerge. It is rumored that women’s kayak events may be further increased at the Olympics to make the sport of canoe/kayak more “equal”. Ah… Sorry….That is not more equal from a canoeist perspective.
Acceptance. With its differing techniques and coach specialization, it would make sense that cash strapped countries would choose to focus their resources on kayak which holds 75% of the medals. Encouragement for canoe and particularly female canoeists is unlikely in such an environment. Despite Olympic marginalization, the sprint canoe sub-discipline remains very popular with just over 50 countries competing in men’s canoe events at the 2011 World Championships/Olympic qualifier as compared to about 70 countries competing in men’s kayak. Sprint canoe/kayak debuted at the 1924 Olympics as an exhibition sport with 6 events, 3 for canoe and 3 for kayak. But of the 12 Olympic events that our heritage sport now contests as of 2012, currently 9 are kayak events and only 3 are canoe events and of course none of the events are for women’s canoe. (A men’s canoe event was removed for 2012 to add a women’s kayak event.) Is it conceivable that the diminished status of canoe as opposed to kayak might be a natural result of not having a women’s component? While some are beginning to recognize that adding women’s canoe events has potential to restore balance to the sport, there are others who have gone so far as to suggest eliminating canoe altogether, presumably to avoid the internal jostling for Olympic dollars and taking care of the women’s ‘problem’ at the same time. If Olympic medals were shared equally between canoe and kayak, it could very well result in a strengthening of the sport of sprint canoe/kayak worldwide whereas eliminating canoe would shrink the sport and would be contrary to the ICF’s goals of increasing participation.
Readiness. Invariably there is always an argument about women’s sports not being ready enough for Olympic inclusion in terms of quantity and quality. Readiness, like equality, is not clearly defined by our leadership and as such is left open to interpretation. There have been many suggestions in articles, posts and blogs that women’s canoe events will be accepted into the Olympic program when the competition meets Olympic standards – suggesting that women must somehow train themselves to a similar elite level as their 
team mates but without the benefit of dollars, sports scientists, nutritionists, physiotherapists and psychologists not to mention top level coaching. Despite only being recently supported and promoted by the ICF, women’s canoe is in a very healthy state worldwide, both in terms of quality and quantity and especially considering the lack of development over the decades. Women’s sprint canoe was given wings when Frank Garner, Chair of the ICF Canoe Sprint Committee and other key members of the ICF, including Secretary General Simon Toulson, decided to fully support 4 exhibition women’s canoe events for the 2009 Sprint World Championships. That support combined with a solid grassroots initiative brought 11 countries together in Dartmouth, Canada for C1 (Canadian singles) and C2 (Canadian doubles) events. During planning for the 2009 World Championships it was announced that Women’s C1 200 meters would be a full medal event for 2010 and participation nearly doubled the next year to 20 
countries. Again in 2011, 20 countries participated at the World Championships – this time with 2 medal events, and there were at least 3 additional countries which did not send their female canoeists due to lack of funding on the part of federations or participants and/or general lack of national federation support. Competition has become increasingly tighter both at the Senior level and especially at the 2011 Junior World Championships (the first ever for women’s canoe) with Canada not experiencing the total dominance it had early on. Women continue to demonstrate that they are more than ready and willing to train and compete on the world stage yet their readiness is heavily scrutinized in a way that men’s canoe and men’s and women’s kayak never were. And as much as they would like to participate, lack of funding, direct discouragement or denial of participation by federations sometimes prevents women’s attendance at world level competitions.
Solutions. It has been proven that the single fastest way to develop high level competitive athletes is to provide high level competition – notably, in the Olympics. If gender equality is to ever be a reality, then the current ‘flawed process’ where members with their own personal agendas are given the opportunity to include or exclude women’s events must be changed. Holding votes to 
include women’s events seems to contradict charters that have already promised equality. Adding a whole slate of women’s canoe events to the Canadian Sprint Canoe Kayak Championships in the mid 1990’s has resulted in a large number of talented female canoeists in Canada, albeit events on the championships race card are still not equal to the men’s events in terms of number, distance and sometimes type of boat used. Increasing the number of women’s canoe events at the World Championships and including them in the Olympics would have no less of a profound effect worldwide.
If sports are serious about equality then votes at all levels should specify inclusion of events – not men’s events or women’s events – simply events with the expectation that both men and women will compete when participation meets clearly defined standards. A 
situation of having equal events in place is affirmative action. It forces people to do the right thing until they are conditioned to do the right thing. The IOC needs to be called out by not just our sport, but by all sports on their caps and quotas if a sport cannot be gender equal and fully represented at the same time. Adding women’s events is not ever going to become less expensive or less time consuming. The right of equality and the original objectives of the Olympic Games – Citius, Altius, Fortius – are not supposed to be tied to a price tag. After 76 years of exclusion, we are repeatedly told to “be patient”, and that “change is slow.” Change does not need to be slow. Unlike paracanoe, which was added to the 2016 program in 2010 with barely enough participation levels at the time and after only one year on the World Championships program, change for women’s canoe is allowed to be slow. Until our sport leadership puts a process in place that enforces equality, it seems that there is no guarantee that women’s canoe will ever make it to the Olympics. Until then, we hold the dubious distinction of being one of the last remaining women’s categories to be given the cold shoulder at the Summer Olympics.
Elaine Keene, WomenCAN International www.womencanintl.com
Elaine Keene has been in canoe sport for over 25 years. She and her husband Brian are the proud parents of two daughters, both canoeists who hold multiple Canadian national championship titles. A paddler herself, Elaine returned to the sport as a Master and has won numerous crew boat medals at the Canadian Masters (CANMAS) Nationals in both canoe and kayak. She is a retired Information Technology professional, having worked as a senior programmer/analyst and consultant for: Maritime Tel and Tel (Halifax, Nova Scotia), Systemhouse Ltd. (Regina, Saskatchewan) and Northern Telecom (Brampton, Ontario); and, as a systems engineer for Hewlett Packard Canada.
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