eliefs of women in sports from de Coubertin perspective.Despite the views of de Coubertin, the Paris Olympic Organizing Committee introduced competition for women in the socially accepted games of tennis and golf, and 12 participants competed in 1904. Since 1904 there has been a steady, slow increase in both the number of events for women and the number of female entrants (Krotee, 1988). Great variation still exists in the number of women sent by each nation. Semyonov (1981) found that the participation rates of women increase as the fertility rate in a country decreases and as the percentage of women in the labour force increases. In effect, these indices reflect social change with respect to womens rights and the increasing opportunities for women in a given society. Therefore, a more critical approach was taken to allow females the equal opportunity of participating in the Olympics. Also, teams and programs developed over the past two decades have uncovered and cultivated interests ignored or taken-for-granted in the past. Girls and women still do not receive an equal share of sport resources in most organizations and communities, but their increased participation clearly has gone hand in hand with the development of new opportunities. One example, of this increase participation could be seen in the Miller Lite Report. Since the middle of the 1970s, many more girls and young women have begun participating in competitive sport. The Miller Lite Report (Miller Brewing Company, 1983) cited statistics from the Womens Sports Foundation, which showed that the percentage of female high school athletes increased from 7% to 35% from 1972 to 1984. Similarly, from 1972 to 1986 the number of high school girls in interscholastic sport increased from 300, 000 to 1,800,000; and at the college level, from 32,000 to 150,000. There has also been an increase from 5.6 to 6.9 sports per college available to women between 1977 and 1984. In con...
