Number of athletes at the Summer Olympics by gender 1896-2020

The first modern Olympic Games in Athens in 1896 saw just 241 athletes compete across 43 different events. Over the next 125 years, these numbers have gradually climbed, and the Games in Rio in 2016 were the largest to date, with more than eleven thousand athletes taking part in 306 different events. The Athens Games in 1896 was exclusively for male athletes, while the Paris Games in 1900 had 22 female competitors in non-athletic events such as tennis and golf (although the golf participants were not aware that it was an Olympic event, and the gold medalist's family was not informed of this until recently). Over time, the number of female athletes slowly increased, although it did not hit the ten percent mark until 1952, or the quarter mark until 1988; while the highest level of female participation was in 2020, where almost 5,400 women competed (49 percent). In the 2020 Olympics in Tokyo, a number of mixed shooting events, table tennis doubles, and swimming and sprinting relays were introduced in an attempt to improve participation among female athletes, although overall participation was lower as many did not travel, withdrew, or were unable to compete due to coronavirus (Covid-19) related problems.