The structure of the first modern Olympic Games in 1896 was built on a rigid belief system that prioritized male athleticism and excluded women by design. Organized by Pierre de Coubertin, the founding president of the International Olympic Committee (IOC), the Games were modeled after the athletic competitions of ancient Greece, where women were not only banned from participating but also barred from spectating.¹ 

De Coubertin adopted this exclusionary model and promoted the Olympics as a celebration of manhood, emphasizing ideals like physical strength, endurance, and military discipline—traits he believed were inherently male.² The IOC Charter, though not formally published until decades later, was shaped by these early values and provided a framework that institutionalized the idea that competitive sport was a male domain.³ This structural bias meant that women were completely excluded from the 1896 Athens Games and only marginally included in 1900, where their participation was restricted to "appropriate" sports such as tennis, golf, and croquet.⁴ 

These limitations reflected dominant social norms of the late 19th century, which viewed women as delicate, passive, and best suited for domestic roles. De Coubertin personally dismissed the idea of female athletes, stating in correspondence with contemporaries that the inclusion of women in the Games would be "impractical, uninteresting, unaesthetic, and incorrect."⁵