The official Olympic broadcaster has urged camera operators to film male and female athletes in the same manner to avoid “stereotypes and sexism” in coverage of the games.
Yiannis Exarchos, chief executive of the Olympic Broadcasting Services (OBS) told reporters in Paris that his organisation had updated its guidance for camera operators, most of whom are men. Images shot by OBS are shared with rights holders around the world — including Nine in Australia.
“Unfortunately, in some events they (women) are still being filmed in a way that you can identify that stereotypes and sexism remains, even from the way in which some camera operators are framing differently men and women athletes,” he said on Sunday.
“Women athletes are not there because they are more attractive or sexy or whatever. They are there because they are elite athletes.”
Exarchos added that the problem existed due to “unconscious bias” with the camera operators and TV editors.
This year’s Olympics are the first in history to see women’s sports given the same TV scheduling prominence as men’s. For instance, the women’s marathon is set to be the final event of the Games instead of the men’s race.
“The schedules of sporting events have traditionally been biased towards highlighting men’s events,” Exarchos said.
“Traditionally, in team sports, you have first women’s finals, and then the men’s final… In strength and combat sports, traditionally you have women’s competitions in the morning and men’s competitions in the afternoon.”
Marie Sallois, director in charge of gender equality at the International Olympic Committee, said the Paris Games were “de facto the world’s largest platform to promote gender equality in and through sport”.
She added that there were “symbolic moments” in Friday’s Opening Ceremony that saw nearly all the countries have a male and female flag carrier, as well as the show paying tribute to influential French women through history.
The reminder to camera operators comes hot on the heels of EuroSport commentator Bob Ballard being removed by the broadcaster after making sexist remarks about the Australian 4x100m women’s freestyle relay team as they collected their gold medals.
Telling them to hurry up from the commentary booth, Ballard said “Well the women just finishing up. You know what women are like … hanging around, doing their make-up”.
While Ballard tried to laugh off the sexist comment, his co-commentator, Lizzie Simmonds, immediately called him out, deeming the comment “outrageous”.
EuroSport removed him from air quickly following the comment.
“During a segment of Eurosport’s coverage last night, commentator Bob Ballard made an inappropriate comment,” the network said in a statement.
“To that end, he has been removed from our commentary roster with immediate effect.”
The issue of sexist filming of female athletes is not a new one. In fact, VML Singapore’s “Change The Angle” campaign for beauty brand Lux put the issue into sharp focus and collected a Gold at the inaugural Cairns Crocodiles Awards earlier this year.
