NEW YORK (1010 WINS) -- The Consulate of France held a discussion about gender equality in sports last week, ahead of the country hosting the 2024 Olympic and Paralympic Games in Paris this summer.
The discussion -- titled "Women in Sports: Dousing the Flame of Inequality" -- was moderated by Dr. Lindsay Sarah Krasnoff, a sports diplomacy expert and author of "Basketball Empire: France and the Making of a Global NBA and WNBA."
The panel included 1976 U.S. Olympic champion Gail Marquis, a Queens native and 11-time basketball Hall of Famer. She was inducted in 2009 into the New York City Basketball Hall of Fame, the first woman of color to be inducted.
The panel also included Kely Nascimento, daughter of the late soccer legend Pelé, and CEO of The Impact Game, "a consultancy working with athletes, brands and non-profits to help them reimagine their social impact, elevate their brand and create revenue."
Acting Consul General Damien Laban told attendees, who gathered at the Upper East Side 1920s Italian Renaissance-style townhouse that houses the consulate, "2024 is a very special year for France. With the honor of organizing the world's largest sporting event comes the necessity to celebrate this incredible athletic tradition. But also to think about how we can use these games to positively transform France and the world."
Laban also pointed out that "France and the Olympic Games have always shared a special bond."
He explained, "As you know, a Frenchman, Baron Pierre de Coubertin, founded the modern Olympic Games in 1886 as a way to unite all nations around the celebration of human excellence ... Thinking of the example of women like [British tennis player] Charlotte Cooper, who by becoming the first woman to win an Olympic medal in the Paris Games of 1900, show the world that any ideas about the inferiority of women are imaginary."
And in a nod to equality at this year's Olympics, Laban said, "The Paris 1900 Olympics were the first to have both female and male athletes -- today, we are thrilled to announce that the Paris 2024 Games will be the first to have an equal amount of female and male athletes for the first time. We're proud to once again be part of this historic advance for gender equality. This falls in line with France's longstanding dedication to promoting women's rights around the world."
U.S. Olympic champion Marquis said she wants to meet those female athletes -- specifically, the new crop of champs.
"I think what I'm most excited about for the upcoming Olympic Games is to meet new champions," said Marquis, who played basketball at Queen's College, where she was a two-time All-American.
She said, laughing, "I'm an Olympic champion and I hate to be by myself! I want to meet Olympic champions across the board."
"If it's 50/50 male and female, I want to see them," she added. "I want to hear their stories. I want to hear how they got to the Olympics. I want to hear their struggles, what they had to fight through, because as I tell many people, the Olympics is just one small microcosm."
Pelé's daughter Nascimento, meanwhile, not surprisingly said, "I'm excited for the women's football [soccer]. I'm excited because I think that with every major sporting event on the women's side, we see more and more amazing competitions because there are many more countries investing a lot more in women's football, and women's sports in general. And so it gets more and more exciting."
Looking back, Wright recalled, "before, when I was coming up, they barely paid a woman coach -- maybe $2,000 or $3,000 for a whole season."
Wright also recalls a time when male athletes did not want to play with female athletes.
"When I was coming up, it was the boys didn't want to play with us, not in sports, but now the boys are used to playing with and against the girls, they're used to that. It was just a cultivation that we had to do, so I was us to speak up, speak out. And that's going to start generating [female athletes]. Don't let it go under the rug .... And you watch: eight years from now, you will be cultivating, you name it, whatever sports, gymnastics to basketball to football, you will be cultivating women athletes.
Wright says another issue is the differentiation between the funding of men's and women's sports. "There's a lot of underneath that we're not seeing," she said of athletic organizations. "I love men's sports, whatever they're doing. I love boy's sports. I just want it to be equal."
Wright would also like to see changes to sports journalism. "I would love to see women not only doing the interviews, but doing the production, so they can get those stories, ask those questions: How did you get there? What sacrifices did you have to make? Because those are the kind of stories and interviews that propelled the next generation when I was on the Olympic team."
In part, Nascimento's solution for supporting women's sports is simple: "I would say buy tickets to women's sports. Put on women's sports at home."