Users of social networks have accused the “Kharkiv Marathon 2016” organizers of sex discrimination, saying that the main prize at a distance of 42.2 km for men is 10 thousand UAH, and for women there is only 5 thousand UAH. The same situation is with silver and bronze awards.
“Tell me, am I the only one who worries about gender discrimination of our esteemed female athletes? Or am I so tight that I do not understand the true motive of this discrimination? Perhaps, a woman takes less pains when winning? Or the value of female victory is obviously lower than of male victory, and I’m not just aware of it?” wrote a Kharkiven Stanislav Smaglyuk.
This message was reposted by more than 50 people (there were bloggers with thousands of subscribers among the reposters), and some users of social networks even called for a boycott of the competition. However, the organizers’ reaction was not long in coming: on Monday on the website of the marathon was reported that women’s prize was equalized with men’s.
“The lower amount of prize for women was caused by poor results in this category in 2015, and by low percentage of female participants (15 women for 182 men). The team of the Kharkiv marathon admits that this distribution was wrong and is extremely sorry to every one whom the decision would hurt,” the organizers wrote in their respond.
In addition, the organizers introduced an additional prize of 10 thousand UAH for breaking of the track record (for men it is 2:18:17, for women it is 2:53:44).
