With gender parity being exactly 50/50 in these Olympics, the women of the U.S. won 65% of their gold medals, and also won a greater percentage of medals overall than the men did. Now it’s not like the American men did bad or anything, but clearly they are a step behind the women, and there’s a few reasons for this.

The first is Title IX: for those unaware, title IX ensures that men and women in the US have equal opportunity in all regards, including sports and athletics. Especially in collegiate sports, there are regulations that colleges must follow to make sure women are given the same opportunity as men, things such as giving out an equal number of scholarships, making sure practice times are equitable, etc… To my knowledge (correct me if I’m wrong), there are not many other countries where this is a thing. So the U.S. women receive much better training and have more opportunities for success compared to other countries, as more money is probably spent on men’s sports in these other countries and they don’t invest in women’s sports as heavily.

But that’s only part of the equation: because why exactly, if the men in the U.S. get the same training and opportunities as the women in the U.S., shouldn’t they be performing just as well? The simple answer as to why they aren’t is football (American football). Football is the number one most invested sport in the U.S., and is played almost exclusively by men. Colleges pour all their money and scholarships into football, which means in order to comply with Title IX, they have to make cuts to some other men’s programs, such as gymnastics, wrestling, volleyball, etc…

Why do you think U.S. women’s gymnastics has always been superior to men’s gymnastics? Well, because if you’re a male athlete in the U.S. and you want a scholarship, chances are you’re more likely to find one playing football, as opposed to gymnastics. Not to say you can’t find one for gymnastics, but it’s much harder. This isn’t the case for women however, as football is not a sport where they get scholarships.

For women’s sports, the funding is more well-rounded. Basketball may get a bit more, but other than that, I’d like to take a guess that the rest of the sports get roughly equal funding, not to mention there aren’t any sports with a significantly higher number of players. However, for men’s sports, football gets a large portion the money, and basketball also get a decent amount. This leaves other men’s sports that are typically in the Olympics in the dust. Not to mention, a football team has about 50-60 players, which eats up much more scholarships for men, and unfortunately, other sports are sacrificed for it.

This is just the culture of the US and it’s not going to change anytime soon. Football generates the most revenue, and so colleges aren’t going to have any incentive to cut funding for football programs. But they will have to keep making more and more cuts to other men’s sports, unless something systematically changes.

As far as I’m aware, in future Olympics, the US women will either keep doing better or remain about the same amount ahead of their competition, whereas the US men will continue to trend downwards and not be as dominant, because colleges and other athletic programs will invest way more into football (a non-Olympic sport) than they will into sports that are part of the Olympics.