Will London 2012 Be a Fairer Olympics?

Is the Olympics sexist? Tessa Jowell seems to think so. The Olympics minister has raised the spectre of "gender discrepancies" at the 2012 games in London, specifically the fact that men will compete in 164 events, compared with 124 for women. Perhaps predictably, the Daily Mail has already made a sneery reference to "the equality Olympics" and many have chosen to concentrate on the prospect of men adopting the only two all-female Olympic sports, synchronized swimming and rhythmic gymnastics (the one where you wear a leotard and throw hula-hoops in the air).

Jowell is of course thinking more of boxing, the only totally female-free Olympic sport, not to mention canoing, cycling, rowing, shooting and wrestling, which offer fewer medal events for women for no apparent reason other than that's the way it's always been. After the 2008 games the cyclist Victoria Pendleton pointed out that while Chris Hoy was able to compete for three gold medals on the track, as a woman she got just the one shot. This seems both unfair and pointless. Women's cycling is as much an elite sport as the men's event, and its under-representation seems to be based solely in genteel - and largely historical - reservations about ladies going fast on bikes.

There is another side to this. Current estimates suggest there are no more than 60 female wrestlers in the whole of Britain. It's hard to make much of a case here for instant elevation, particularly with professional sports such as darts and the now-demoted baseball lobbying for their own inclusion.

In any case, the makeup of the 2012 program is a matter solely for the International Olympic Committee, an organization that pursues its own labyrinthine agenda largely unhindered by the opinions of UK cabinet ministers. Plus, the IOC would no doubt point to the recent inclusions of the women's pole vault (2000) and steeplechase (2008) as evidence of its own creeping progressiveness. But the issue has at least been decisively raised. And perhaps, also, it wouldn't really be the London Olympics without a little fevered talk of political correctness gone mad.