22 January 2025 – Paris 2024 was the first Olympic Games to achieve parity on the field of play, but the push for gender equality continues at the Olympic Winter Games Milano Cortina 2026. Marie Barsacq and Diana Bianchedi tell Nancy Gillen for the Olympic Review how the games can empower girls and women in sport and society.
On the final day of the Olympic Games Paris 2024, Dutch endurance runner Sifan Hassan powered through the streets of the French capital to clinch a dramatic gold medal in the women’s marathon. Just hours later, Hassan was congratulated by thousands of spectators as she received her medal during the Closing Ceremony in the Stade de France.
Until that moment, it had been a tradition for the men’s marathon to take place on the last day of the Games. The decision to put the spotlight on the women’s marathon symbolised Paris 2024’s commitment to showcasing female athletes as part of a wider push for gender equality within sport and society.
Paris 2024’s then Executive Director of Impact and Legacy, Marie Barsacq (now France’s Minister for Sport, Youth and Community Development), was crucial to these efforts. A trained lawyer who previously worked in sports development, she reflects on the gender equality initiatives implemented during the Games as her eight-year tenure with Paris 2024 comes to an end.
Marie Barsacq
Marie Barsacq was the Paris 2024 Executive Director of Impact and Legacy, a role she took on during the Candidature Stage. With a background in law, Barsacq previously worked for 10 years at the French National Olympic Committee, focusing on employment and professional development in sport, before joining the French Football Federation. In late 2024, Barsaq was appointed Minister for Sport, Youth and Community Development in the government of the French Prime Minister.
Diana Bianchedi
Diana Bianchedi started her career as a fencer, winning Olympic gold medals in the women’s team foil event at Barcelona 1992 and Sydney 2000. After retiring from fencing, Bianchedi became Vice-President of the Italian Olympic Committee, while also training as a doctor in sports medicine. She is the Chief Strategy Planning and Legacy Officer for Milano Cortina 2026.
“Achieving gender parity on the field of play was a driver for us to introduce similar initiatives in other areas,” Barsacq explains. “The Paris 2024 staff and volunteer force were 50-50 male and female, and we asked our sponsors to make sure their teams working on the Games were 50-50. This 50-50 was the norm. It was a rule and everybody who was working for Paris 2024 was asked to respect it. It was very clear, very well known by the stakeholders, and they were very committed to that objective.”
Paris 2024 also supported projects that encourage girls and women to participate in sport at a grassroots level, as well as programmes that focus on increasing female representation in coaching, leadership and media. This support aimed to address deep-rooted imbalances in society, but symbolic initiatives were also used to spark initial conversations about gender equality.
These included the schedule, which put a spotlight on the women’s marathon; the marathon route, which honoured the Women’s March during the French Revolution; and the logo, which prominently featured Marianne, a symbol of the French Republic. “We wanted to showcase that women can be leaders, they can express themselves and they can change the world,” Barsacq says. These symbolic initiatives were so successful at attracting attention to Paris 2024’s gender equality drive that Barsacq encourages Milano Cortina 2026 to follow a similar strategy.
Be ambitious, never quit and have symbolic initiatives. These initiatives create media coverage, which then puts pressure on stakeholders and encourages them to be progressive and gender-equal. Marie Barsacq – Former Paris 2024 Executive Director of Impact and Legacy and French Minister for Sport, Youth and Community Development
Listening intently is Diana Bianchedi, the Chief Strategy Planning and Legacy Officer for the Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games Milano Cortina 2026. Bianchedi won two Olympic gold medals during her fencing career before entering the world of sports administration following her retirement as an athlete.
Although there won’t be an equal split of male and female athletes, nonetheless 47 per cent of the participants will be women, making Milano Cortina 2026 the most gender-balanced Olympic Winter Games in history. In addition, organisers are pushing to increase female representation in their workforce and empower more women to take up leadership and coaching roles in sport.
“We are aiming for more than 40 per cent women in our workforce,” says Bianchedi. “Now we have 51 per cent. We are also working hard on this by providing training on gender equity, female leadership and safeguarding as part of the onboarding process for new employees.
“This type of training will also be extended to our volunteers, as we aim to equip 18,000 individuals with greater awareness and knowledge on these issues, fostering a new wave of active citizenship. In line with our commitment to raising awareness, we are also working closely with our partners to encourage their support for gender equality projects. “In Italy, there is only one female national governing body president. So, in collaboration with the Italian Olympic Committee, we are promoting and training female managers in sport. We’re also trying to improve the number of female coaches.”
Much like Paris 2024 before, Milano Cortina 2026 is focusing on transforming public spaces to encourage sports participation among girls and women.
“We are working on a legacy programme to promote the creation of spaces for people to do physical activity,” Bianchedi explains. “In Italy, the age where people do the least activity is from 35 to 50 years old. In this range, the most inactivity is among women. For example, if we can create a space in the park where you can do physical activity, this will increase the number of people doing so. But a lot of women will not go to the park when it gets dark as it won’t be safe. We have to consider that women have different needs, and we are making sure this is taken into account when these programmes are designed.”
In addition, to address the fundamental differences in how female athletes are portrayed in the media compared to their male counterparts, Milano Cortina 2026 translated the IOC’s Portrayal Guidelines into Italian. This version was published during Paris 2024, encouraging gender-equal, fair and inclusive representation of sport in the run-up to Milano Cortina 2026.
Paris 2024 has been a source of inspiration for organisers, particularly when it comes to gender equality initiatives. More than 200 representatives from Milano Cortina 2026 learned valuable lessons about organising a Games when they visited Paris as part of the IOC’s Observers Programme.
The experience in Paris was very important. It was truly valuable for the entire team to experience first-hand the broader impact of the Games. Often, we get wrapped up in logistical details and forget about the opportunity to promote powerful messages on the world stage. For example, having both a male and female flagbearer sends an important statement. We also saw the importance of supporting female athletes who are mothers, such as allowing them to have their children at the Olympic Village. This is something we will also implement. Diana Bianchedi – Olympic gold medalist and Chief Strategy Planning and Legacy Officer for Milano Cortina 2026
The gender equality legacy of Paris 2024 is set to live on at Milano Cortina 2026, but Barsacq believes the Games have already had an impact on French society.
“We worked hard for the success of the Games and I’m very proud of what we’ve done,” she says. “We were dreamers. When we were bidding, we had big objectives and ambitions, and a clear vision of what sport should be like after the Games. I think with our collective effort and energy, we managed to move the lines. I think there has been change in France. We talked a lot about the issue of gender equality in the build-up to the Games. The media were very interested in gender parity on the field of play and, because of that, it was an opportunity for us to explain why we should prioritise gender equality in public spaces, in the school yard and in federations. I think there will be a clear legacy from that. We built concrete programmes and supported a lot of organisations that are active on a daily basis in gender equality in sport. Now they have the capacity to develop their programmes and be part of a strong legacy.”
Despite Paris 2024’s many achievements, there is still substantial progress to be made in advancing gender equality within the Olympic Movement, especially in areas such as coaching, leadership and the media. Bianchedi is aware of these challenges but remains hopeful that the upcoming Winter Games will serve as a pivotal moment for change.
“The Paris 2024 Olympics and the Milano Cortina 2026 Winter Olympics mark a turning point: never before in the history of the Games has such a gender balance been achieved,” Bianchedi admits. “It has taken decades upon decades to reach this point, but it is on this foundation of equality that we have a duty to build the future.”
Most importantly, in similar fashion to Barsacq and the Paris 2024 organisers, Bianchedi recognises the unparalleled potential that hosting an Olympic Games presents for promoting gender equality in sport and society.
“We believe that we have a big opportunity,” she says. “Through sport, we can speak with everybody, and this makes it easy to share the values of respect, friendship and equality as widely as possible.”
