Women's Ski Jumping at the Olympic Winter Games

Although it has fallen off of the map recently due to the Olympics taking place, the decision by the International Olympic Committee to disallow women to ski jump in Olympic competition angered many and was one of the main causes of pre-Olympic controversy. This is a social justice issue because only men currently compete in ski jumping at the Olympics, and it is one of the only events that is single gender, other than synchronized swimming, rhythmic gymnastics(women only), Nordic combined, and boxing (men only).
In the months leading up to the Vancouver 2010 Olympics, a group of female ski jumpers presented a gender-discrimination case to the B.C. Supreme Court and the B.C. Court of Appeal. It was decided that the International Olympic Committee and the Vancouver Olympic Committee were not breaching the Charter of Rights and Freedoms with their decision. Their reasoning was that there was not enough interest in the sport yet to warrant Olympic competition, with only 5 countries represented in the case, and the VANOC decision had been made in 2006. There is a greater chance for women to ski jump in Sochi, Russia at the 2014 games, but this case arose too close to the Vancouver games that already had plans established.
In 2006 when VANOC posted their plans for the 2010 Olympics, a women’s ski jumping world cup did not exist yet, and women had only been competing in the FIS Continental Cup, a notch below the world championship for only two years. I think that as a social justice issue, it was reasonable to disallow the event participation because not enough interest and growth had occurred in the sport at the time of the decision. If the court case had been put forth in 2006, during the planning of the 2010 games, a more favorable outcome would have been more likely.
At first glance, the situation does not appear to be fair to women because in 2010 there would have been enough competitors as in the female bobsledding events, but it is still a small number, and trying to change the Olympic schedule 4 years after posted is not fair to the organizers or other athletes that would have to be moved around or strained for quality of accommodation at the Olympics. Now that the Vancouver and International Olympic Committees have spent nearly $100,000 dollars on the case, I imagine the event will probably be included in the Sochi 2014 games. The FIS world cup will have taken place for 5 years, and will have garnered a significant amount of depth at the top level, as requested by the IOC. The expansion of the sport in a few years would begin to make the IOC appear excessively opposed to the event if they did not include it, especially when this large push was just made last year.
It’s unfortunate that the wants of the female ski jumpers could not be met, but to be fair to the Olympic committees, they were given little notice to the apparently very important case until it was too late to schedule it in for the Vancouver games. In future, to rectify the situation, the event just needs to be easily included in the planning of an Olympic games years in advance, not months, and everyone will be happy. I find it hard to believe that anyone one would seriously be prejudiced against letting women compete in ski jumping, even if it is taking a little longer for it to be included that initially hoped.