The Canadian Olympic advantage

By Herman Thind,
Special to The Post

Over the past couple of weeks I’ve been chronicling, over social media, the success of the Canadian women at the Rio Olympics, and how much more interesting the women’s competition is to watch, whether it’s in soccer, basketball, rugby, or other sports.

Success has been a regular thing for women from Canada, the UK, Australia, New Zealand, Germany, South Africa, and other liberal democracies.  Many of these nations (Australia and Canada, for example) are consistently punching above their ‘weight class’ when it comes to size of nation and medal counts.  

What is the secret?  Why is Canada doing so well in women’s sports?  

While we can certainly point out the facilities and coaching all Western nations provide their athletes, there are other cultural factors that significantly favour Western liberal democracies over many ‘eastern’ and ‘southern’ nations.

Canadian values have consistently moved towards diversity, inclusion, and equality, if not equity.  We value gender equality, and equality in general.  Sure, we still have a lot of work to do to achieve our collective goals, but we are eons ahead of many nations around the world.  In African nations, much of Asia, and much of South America, women simply don’t have access to facilities their male counterparts do.  Women are discouraged from higher education, from politics, the business world, and sport.

When I look at my own ancestral homeland - India - I see a systemic problem with discrimination and outright bias against women and minority groups.  The challenge is more insidious where women are concerned.  They are discouraged from school in most cases, with the exception of families from the monied or intellectual classes.  Sport is relegated to the world of school children - and even there, impressed upon boys, not young girls.

When the basic encouragement for success in fields outside of home-making are non-existent, and in most cases broadly discouraged, there remains little need for funding for women’s sport infrastructure.

This situation is not unique to India in the developing world:  women in South and Central America, the Caribbean, Africa, and many other parts of Asia suffer the same challenges.  In these lands women and girls are often pushed into a life of servitude to their families, and to the dominant males.  Young girls often carry the burden of work in poor homes, and are often forced into early marriage.

While economic concerns are often used as a crutch to defend these outdated attitudes, it’s cultural norms and government policies which trap these women in lives that most Canadian women would never be faced with.  The result is half a population held back from achieving what they are truly capable of.  Sports is not the only area these nations lose. Economies which don’t engage 50% of the population effectively simply cannot succeed, and are generally relegated to poverty and ongoing development.

Canada is - and can be much more of - a beacon to the rest of the world, as our women demonstrate what could be if women everywhere were given equal treatment.  As in most cases of development, education will be key.  Outdated, and flat out wrong cultural norms must be shattered.  That education starts with foreign development funding from western democracies.

Canada’s new government has been embracing these goals - fully understanding the global benefit of these very basic human rights achievements.  It is up to all of us to encourage this to ensure a world that has equal opportunity for all.  It’s in all our best interest.

 

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