Title IX fans should be feeling pretty darn good. This year, for the first time, the US team sent more women than men to the games: 268 women and 255 261 men. And the ladies carried the American team’s medal tally: Thirty percent of female American athletes had medaled by Friday, compared to 15 percent of their male counterparts. In fact, if American women were their own country, they’d be fifth in the overall count of medals. Let’s do the numbers:
Here’s how US medalists stack up by sport (mouse over the bars for detailed numbers):
Fact is, the American women athletes have been bringing it for awhile. Thanks Title IX!
(Note: Unlike the charts above, the medal count in this one includes each medal given to individual athletes for team events.)
And it’s not just the home team gals who are leveling the playing field. Women’s participation in the games has increased steadily since 1960, when women made up 11.4 percent of the total number of athletes. This year, 44 percent of Olympians are women. And, for the first time ever, every country has at least one female athlete in their delegation.
