The Commonwealth Games Federation marked International Women’s Day on Thursday by announcing that the upcoming Commonwealth Games in Gold Coast will be the most gender equal multi-sports event in history.
There will an equal number of medal events between women and men for first time ever while basketball, hockey and swimming will feature over 50% female Technical Officials, which is a first in international sport.
The final breakup of medals will be 133 for women’s events, 133 for men’s events and nine for mixed/open events. The CGF approved seven additional women’s event categories to the Gold Coast 2018 sports programme to ensure that men and women compete for an equal number of medals.
The federations for basketball, hockey and swimming have confirmed that at least 50% of their technical officials presiding over the sporting action will be women. The largest jump in female technical officials comes in rugby sevens, which will see the number of women officiating at Gold Coast’s Robina Stadium increase to 33% compared to 5% at Glasgow 2014, according to the CWG release.
A number of other sports have also achieved major progress with significantly more women represented across their pool of technical officials. Wrestling has increased its number of female technical officials from 13% to 32%. The other sports increase includes lawn bowls from 28% to 42%, rhythmic gymnastics from 86% to 100%, badminton from 32% to 41%, triathlon from 33% to 42%, weightlifting from 34% to 43%, para powerlifting from 32% to 39%, table tennis from 26% to 32% and boxing from 13% to 18%.
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