"The athletes of today wouldn't have been able to make it without those of the past."

BarcelonaWomen's sport has become a central focus of current events. Its presence in Catalan newscasts has increased tenfold in the last decade and, although still far from parity, it already represents 30.6% of sports broadcasts, according to the Catalan Government's Plan to Promote Women's Sport in Catalonia 2024-2030. A comparison between the 1900 and 2024 Paris Olympics shows the extent to which the situation of women in professional sport has changed: at the 1900 Paris Olympics—the first to admit women—women athletes accounted for 2.2% of participants; by 2024, female competitors represented 50%.

An uncomfortable past

Until not so long ago, "woman" and "sport" were not only a marginal combination, but also a source of scandal. Just remember the insults - "horse," "butch"– that the biker Maria Dolors Roca received in the 1930s. Or the words she dedicated The Gazette of Venice In 1894, he told noblewomen who had acquired the indecorous habit of cycling through parks: "Cycling is an infernal invention which, in an instant, opens the gap between husband and wife (...). the embers, that is, in the arms of another."

These and many other experiences appear in Pioneers of sport (Albertí Editor, 2025), the book by Elisenda Albertí that tells the stories of nineteen women from around the world who forged their way in a hostile environment to become sporting icons. Their stories are an example of individual effort, but also of collaboration: the women helped each other climb higher and run further, and they also counted on the support of men in their endeavors. This support, in some cases, was even physical: Marie Paradis, the first woman to reach the summit of Montblanc, did so with the help of two fellow climbers.

However, even men who advocated for women's access to sport believed that their participation should be different. In 1919, after the Fémina Prize was presented to skier Teresa Bartomeu at the headquarters of the Catalan Hiking Centre, Joan Danés gave the speech "In tribute to female athletes", where he said: "You, O women!, must make hiking a love, parallel to us, men, who must make it a study."

The Catalan pioneers

Teresa Bartomeu, Olympian Rosa Torras, athlete Margot Moles, swimmer Maria Aumacellas, javelin thrower and Barça board member Anna Maria Martínez Sagi, mountaineer Carme Romeu… Many Catalan women throughout the 20th century confronted the prejudices against them, the fragile. And also the boundaries imposed by clothing: the Italian-Spanish Lilí Álvarez caused a stir at the 1931 Roland Garros by competing in a skirt-trousers, a piece seen as transgressive by traditional society.

In Catalonia, many of the pioneers came from families with cultural and social capital. Some were daughters of the intellectual elite and had been educated in international schools that viewed sports as part of children's education. These women were also connected to the world of culture: Maria Aumancellas was a musician as well as a swimmer; Anna Maria Martínez Sagi founded the Women's and Sports Club with the writer Anna Murià, a close friend of Mercè Rodoreda; and Teresa Bartomeu corresponded with Caterina Albert and Josep Carner, who dedicated several to her.

The claims

The connections between sport and culture are surprising today, when the gap between the two spheres seems ever wider. But the stories of these women show how women's sport grew in dialogue with the great cultural and political debates of the time. "The more cultured people are, the more choices they have," says the book's author, Elisenda Albertí, by phone. "When the demands for women's rights began, one of the first things people demanded was the right to equal education. These athletes came from a social and cultural situation that allowed them to do things that were far from other women. And they took advantage of their position to assert themselves."

The right of women to participate in sports was not the only demand made by some of these athletes. This is the case of Teresa Bartomeu, linked to the Catalanist Excursionist Center of Catalonia, and Margot Moles, who, during the Spanish Civil War, went to vindicate the Soviet Union's sports model for "breaking the record of useful heroism in the anti-fascist effort." Margot Moles Piña's husband, also an athlete, was shot in 1942.

"Like art, like science, like everything in life, sport is linked to politics," says Albertí. "Women's sport was also part of the demands for women's emancipation. It couldn't be excluded from politics: it was politics."

The world of sport today

Despite the undeniable progress and the efforts of campaigns such as the "Run like a girl", gender gaps in access to sport persist. Data on sports practices from the Generalitat show that there is a ten-point difference between the percentage of boys and girls who participate in some extracurricular physical and sporting activity (78% and 68%, respectively), a difference that reaches thirteen points when it comes to students born outside of Catalonia (4 adults (62% and 47%).

The differences are also evident in the professional sphere. As public interest in women's sport grows, so does the economic attention: Deloitte forecasts that global revenue from women's sport will rise from $692 million in 2022 to $2.4 billion in 2025. But that money hasn't reached the athletes yet: on the list of Sportico Of the world's 100 highest-paid athletes in 2024, not a single woman will be included. And even in highly egalitarian countries, such as Denmark, the presence of women in management structures remains minimal: only one Olympic federation, the weightlifting federation, has a female president. However, there are signs of progress: according to a BBC study, 90% of sports disciplines now distribute prize money equally between men and women, a trend that has become more established in recent years.

However, in the professionalization of women's sports there is an underlying problem: the lack of research on the effects of sport on the female bodyA Northumbria University study highlighted that female-only research on sports health accounts for only 6% of research, compared to 34% for male-only research. Emma Cowley, a postdoctoral researcher in women's health who participated in this study, insists that this difference "could mean that injury prevention recommendations and programs help men but not women."

"For women to excel in competition, we must understand their physiology and psychology," Cowley insists. The researcher also asserts that more research on women's athletic health could help women create their own benchmarks and dispel the socially prevalent idea that only men create "the standard" for universal athletic ability.

Albertí, who has started some three thousand biographies of women and is already preparing her next book, reaffirms the importance of highlighting female role models in various fields: "The athletes of today wouldn't have been able to make it without those of the past. We have to watch over this legacy." And she warns: "We can't be complacent because freedom is never a given: you have to earn it day by day."