Why Indian Women Athletes Don't Win Many Medals In Olympics?

BANGALORE: Women empowerment is today a topic of great concern in all parts of the world mainly due to the increasing number of atrocities against women folk. But how is women empowerment and olympic connected? Read on to know further.

Coming to Indian Olympic scenario, the country despite being the world’s second most populous nation has witnessed little Olympic glory so far. In fact, this country has just one individual gold medal in its entire Olympic history, when Abhinav Bindra won a shooting event at the 2008 Beijing Summer Games. With only 26 medals overall, India ranks right between Estonia and Georgia, two former Soviet republics that only started competing as independent nations in 1992. Krishna Poonia, one of India's star performers at the 2012 Olympics retorted, "Unless we have good competition in India, we will never produce an Olympic medallist," reports India Today.

According to a new study conducted by researchers at Michigan’s Grand Valley State University, nations where there are higher levels of women’s empowerment turn out to be a country that bags maximum laurels in the international athletic events, especially in the Olympic Games. Though, this was true for both male and female athletes, it was more evident in female athletes as the strength and autonomy of women in a given nation also influences how many bronze, silver and gold medals that country takes home.

The findings, led by GVSU Professor Aaron Lowen, were published in April this year in the Journal of Sports Economics. The study that examined the success of over 130 nations participating in the Summer Olympics from 1996 to 2012, is in contrast with the past studies on the Olympics that concluded wealthier and more populous nations tend to claim more medals.

Lowen said, "Many studies have shown that women’s empowerment is linked with economic development and better outcomes for children, but there’s been little research on whether it leads to female sports success. We read claim after claim that it does, so we decided it was worth finding out if it’s true. Fortunately, the results turned out to be clear cut. No matter how we conducted the analyses or what measures of success we used, women’s empowerment predicted Olympic success," reports Edge on the Net.

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