The official Nike kits for American women competing in the Paris 2024 Olympics have been slammed as “a costume born of patriarchal forces” by one track athlete and “treating women as second-class citizens” by a commentator on Nike’s Instagram page because of the skimpy nature of the swimming costumes and leotards.

Meanwhile, France has been criticised for its decision to bar its sportswomen from wearing the hijab.

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Although the International Olympics Committee (IOC) has allowed international athletes to wear the hijab, French sportswomen will still be barred from exercising the right to wear the outfits of their choice during the Summer Olympics, which started on Friday and continue until August 11.

Whether it’s a question of sexist outfits or a ban on the headscarf worn by some Muslim women, directives can impinge on women’s freedoms and needs, activists say. Women should be allowed to wear outfits they feel comfortable in, they say.

Let’s take a look at the debate around women’s attire in athletics.

Why have Nike kits for this Olympics been criticised?

In April, the first look at Nike’s kits for men and women on the US track and field teams for the Paris Olympics were released by Citius Mag, a website that covers track and field.

The attire for men is a tank top and shorts that hit below the fingertips of the mannequin wearing them. For women, the kit is a leotard with a high-cut bikini line, drawing ire from female athletes.

“A costume born of patriarchal forces” is how US track and field athlete Lauren Freshmen described the kit in an Instagram post.

“If this outfit was truly beneficial to physical performance, men would wear it,” she said.

Jaleen Roberts, a US Paralympic athlete, wrote of the image of the new Nike kits: “This mannequin is standing still and everything’s showing … imagine MID FLIGHT.”

Another commentator on Nike’s Instagram page wrote: “Shame, shame, shame Nike in treating women as second class citizens with their Olympic outfits.”

However, other athletes pointed out that female athletes will have a range of designs to choose from and may opt to wear the men’s kits if they wish.

Olympic pole vaulter Katie Moon said: “I absolutely love people defending women, but we have at least 20 different combinations of a uniform to compete in with all the tops and bottoms available to us.”

Sports giant Nike defended the outfits saying, “The goal was to offer options that met athletes’ desires for choice, comfort and performance.”

It described the kits as “the most athlete-informed, data-driven and visually unified the company has ever produced”.

Why has France banned the hijab for its athletes?

In September, French Minister of Sports Amelie Oudea-Castera justified the hijab ban by saying the government was opposed to the display of religious symbols during the world’s biggest athletic event.

The IOC ruled that athletes were free to wear the headscarf. However, French athletes are still subject to the rules of their sports federation and are not allowed to wear hijabs during the games.

Muslims make up nearly 10 percent of the population in France, and human rights experts say the hijab ban is part of a trend of policymakers “weaponising” France’s tradition of “laicite” (secularism) to exclude Muslim women and girls from French society. They note laws to ban the headscarf and the abaya, a loose-fitting, long-sleeved robe, in public schools in 2004 and in 2023, respectively.

Timothee Gauthierot, a basketball coach in the Paris suburb of Noisy-le-Sec, told Al Jazeera that there are few hijab-wearing girls who dream of becoming professional athletes in France because “there is so much discrimination” against them. “We don’t allow them to reach that level,” he said.

However, this is not a story that began in April or September. Female athletes have long been unhappy with the sports kits they are required to wear.

The Norway women’s team lines up during the 2018 Women’s Beach Handball World Cup final against Greece on July 29, 2018 in Kazan, Russia. In 2021, the team was fined for refusing to wear bikini briefs at a match [Ilnar Tukhbatov/Epsilon/Getty Images]

When have female athletes fought against kit rules before?

From 1934 to 1997, the uniform for the England women’s cricket team was white blouses and white divided skirts. Trousers were introduced only in 1997 after demands from female players.
In 2018, US tennis champion Serena Williams wore a red and black full-body catsuit during the French Open. She had recently given birth and the suit was designed specifically to prevent blood clots. The World Tennis Association (WTA) did not have an explicit rule that disallowed wearing a full suit to tennis tournaments. However, her clothing sparked outrage, prompting the French Tennis Federation chief to impose a new dress code, barring the suit from future French Opens.
However, for the 2019 season, the WTA announced that it would allow leggings or compression shorts to be worn by women without skirts after criticism and pushback.
In July 2021, Norway’s women’s beach handball team decided to wear shorts instead of bikini bottoms to a game as part of their assertion of dress choice. They were fined 150 euro ($177) per player as a result. On the other hand, men were entitled to wear shorts as long as they were four inches above their knees and not too baggy.
During the 2020 Tokyo Olympics, the German women’s gymnastics team wore ankle-length body suits instead of bikini-cut unitards, which it said were too revealing. “We wanted to show that every woman, everybody, should decide what to wear,” team member Elisabeth Seitz told CNN.

Do sports kit rules deter women from professional sports?

It depends on who you ask because there is limited research on the topic.

Faculty from New Zealand’s Massey University conducted a research survey assessing the impact of uniform design on female athletes’ confidence. Those findings were published in February.

The survey, in which women from different sports in New Zealand’s National Sports Organisations were interviewed, indicated that the design of sports kits “could contribute to increased female athlete anxiety, particularly around body image, visibility of menstrual blood and visibility of underwear while wearing their uniform”.

English hockey player Tess Howard also researched this as a student at Durham University, concluding that gendered sports kits such as skirts often cause teenage girls to drop out of sports. Her research involving more than 400 women was published in April. Seventy percent of the women surveyed said they had seen girls drop out of sports because of sports uniforms creating body image concerns.

Victoria University in Australia surveyed 727 girls to assess their beliefs about sport uniforms. Sixty-five percent did not want to wear skirts during school sports.

Are women’s sports kits too sexualised?

Experts say another reason so many women are put off professional sports is that female athletes are too often subjected to focus on their attire and body shapes rather than their abilities and performance.

“It is unfortunate that far too often, attention is paid more on how women athletes look, versus their power, grit and performance,” Danette Leighton, CEO of the New York-based nonprofit Women’s Sports Foundation, told Al Jazeera in a written statement.

“We believe clothing should help athletes feel empowered to do their best, not overshadow their efforts or bring undue scrutiny.

“There is opportunity for sport governing bodies, sponsors, and all involved, to be more thoughtful and inclusive,” Leighton said.