What are we talking about, here? The email talks about the difference between 1900, 1996, and 2004. Then it talks about how Afganistan, Pakistan, and Iraq sent women this year. What do these things have to do with each other? Surely, George Bush isn't taking credit for something that happended in 1900? The conflation on the two ideas is typical republican sneakiness. The only substance seems to be the contention that Pakistan, Afganistan, and Iraq are behaving differently than have in the past. "Would these changes have happended on their own?" The email asks wistfully? What changes? The increase in the number of women participating in the games? The behavior of Iraq, Pakistan, and Afganistan? The answer, of course, is "no" changes don't usually "happen on their own," whatever that means, but they were already happening long before GWB became president.
Participation by women in the olympic games has risen graudally and steadily since 1900, but it really started to shoot up after the 1992 olympics (see IOC charts). I think there are three reasons.
The number of events open to women increases every year.
In 1995, the IOC changed its charter to make encourgaing participation by women a priority. At the same time, it formed an advisory board for women's issues.
More importantly, since 1992 a Paris-based lobbying group has been pressuring the IOC to increase participation by women and to exclude from competition countries that discriminate against women.
I know this doesn't really answer the unanswerable questions posed by the email (although atleast one of the questions is moot - the IOC did not recognize the Taliban as the government of Afganistan so they could not have sent a team), but we'll never know the answers, will we? It's pretty clear that women weren't treated well in Afganistan under the Taliban and Iraq under Hussein and that they aren't treated well now by our friends in Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, and Pakistan. Do we have to invade those countries next, or might we be better off letting the IOC and lobbying groups do it the blood-shed free way?
