The place of women in audiovisual and digital media during the Paris 2024 Gaming.

Introduction

The Olympic and Paralympic Games are international events of exceptional scope, bringing together thousands of athletes from all over the world and enjoying unrivalled media exposure. In addition to the sporting events, an average of 24.4 million viewers watched the opening ceremony of the Olympic Games on Friday, July 26, a record audience in the history of French television, all channels and programs combined. These figures testify to the unifying nature of the Gaming. Audiences were also generally very satisfied with the live coverage, giving it an average rating of 8/10.

The 1900 Paris Gaming Games were the first in which women took part, albeit to a very limited extent (22 women out of 997 athletes). Today, while sexist stereotypes are still particularly prevalent in the sporting world, this edition of the Gaming shows real progress towards equality. Indeed, on December 7, 2020, the IOC announced that the Paris Olympics would be the first ever parity Games, with as many female as male athletes competing.

Against this backdrop, the event provided an ideal opportunity to raise the profile of women's sports on television and to ensure that women were fairly represented in sports broadcasts.

In line with its responsibilities under article 3-1 of the French law of September 30, 1986, Arcom is constantly striving to increase the representation of women in sports programming. To do so, it applies its skills by drawing up findings in its studies, on the one hand, and, on the other, by encouraging proactive action on the part of publishers. The present study is part of a continuum of actions designed to encourage better representation of women in sports programming (1). It shows that the sports movement's commitment has been reflected in the image conveyed by the audiovisual media, both in terms of the place of women in broadcasts of the Olympic and Paralympic Games (2) and in media coverage of the latter (3).