jebmo’s posthaven

The Olympic movement is the symbol that epitomizes sport, and the decisions that the International Olympic Committee makes have a tremendous impact. While the opportunities available for women have grown by leaps and bounds since the first modern Olympics Games in 1896, where women were completely banned from competing, we have yet to close the discrepancy in the number of opportunities and the treatment of women in the Olympics and in sports. A tidy metaphor for the inequality of treatment occurred during the 2012 Olympic Games when a number of international teams

for sending their male athletes off in business class while their female counterparts of the same sport

.

The most entrenched gender biases are embedded in the events themselves. In swimming, the longest swim of 1,500 meters is shortened to 800 meters for the women. Of the 16 canoe/kayak events, 11 are men's events; there is

event for women nor are there any long-distance kayaking events for women.

Plus, there are still far fewer Olympic women's events than Olympic men's events

: In the most recent 2016 Summer Olympics there were 136 women's events, compared with 161 for men. Even in those sports where women have traditionally garnered more recognition and coverage than men, such as gymnastics, women compete in four events (uneven bars, vault, floor, balance beam), while men compete in six (parallel bars, vault, floor, high bar, rings and pommel horse).

Other events offer fewer spots for women than men on the Olympic roster, such as

where the men have four-man and two-man teams and the women only have a two-woman bobsled team.

Peter Westbrook, an Olympic bronze medalist in fencing,

, ''The international federation is putting in women's saber and taking out women's foil. If you put in one new women's event and take out another women's event that has been around for so long, that's not giving women more.''

And it cuts both ways, too -- in January, the governing body for rowing

the men's lightweight event to add the women's rowing event. Forcing sports to eliminate or rotate out events if they are to attempt to provide an equal platform for both men and women is detrimental to all athletes and counterproductive in the fight for gender equality.

The IOC's mission statement

that it seeks the "advancement of women in sport at all levels and in all structures, with a view to achieving equality between men and women. Help in the development of sport for all." Yet it remains clear that women do not have nearly the same opportunities, both in quantity and quality, to compete.

We are at a decisive moment in the history of women in sports where many charters,

and even the IOC have stated their commitment toward girls and women and yet have not fully turned these words into action.

As awareness continues to grow around this issue, female athletes are now finding allies in their male counterparts. Earlier this month, USA Hockey Olympian Mike Eruzione -- one of the heroes of the 1980 "Miracle on Ice" at the Olympics in Lake Placid, New York --

for the women's boycott.

I asked the

, one of the biggest advocates for women in sports and an organization that personally supported my pursuit in athletics by awarding me two travel and training grants, to comment.