Striving For Equality in Bhutan

Even though I have been a tireless supporter of His Royal Highness and the Bhutan Olympic Committee (BOC) I was quite close to not doing Tour of the Dragon this year. In fact I was quite close to protesting the race in the face of my loyalty here. Here’s why.

When I first started helping the BOC with their Tour of the Dragon event I immediately noticed that they didn’t have an equal prize purse for men and women. Initially they had a token amount offered to the first place woman that was dramatically less than the first place man, and they called it a “consolation prize.” Ouch.

I started having conversations with them about the importance of equality in sport for both men and women, laying out all the standard reasons that equal prize money makes sense while developing sport in any nation: That men race against men and women race against women, just like in the Olympics; that women train and race just as diligently as the men and therefore should be compensated equally; that in order to develop sport for both boys and girls it is critical that girls know that they are on equal footing and are offered equal perks for their efforts; etc. etc.

Their arguments to me were the age old ones we used to hear from event directors back in the day when professional triathletes like myself (men and women), would protest unequal events while laying the groundwork for equality in triathlon. The BOC would tell me that they didn’t have the money to offer prize money to women. I would counter that if they had a prize purse at all, then they had the money—the issue was in how the race committee chose to allocate that money. They would say that there weren’t enough women in the race to warrant offering them prize money. I would counter that if the numbers of females weren’t the same as males it was legitimate to go less deep on the women’s purse; for example offer only first place or top three women prizes when the men are given top ten. They would still say that they didn’t have the money. Which by any account was illogical, but they had no other argument that sounded reasonable.

In efforts to support my cause I wrote multiple letters to the women on the race committee, the entire staff of the BOC, His Royal Highness and the Prime Minister explaining how critical this issue was in laying groundwork for their sport development efforts. When I came back to Bhutan in February of 2015 to help with the Bhutan International Marathon, I found that the Tour of the Dragon race committee had once again decided not to have prize money for a womens field. They told me that women could race for the overall top 10 prizes. Argh. My efforts had landed on deaf ears.

I knew that I couldn’t come and do this event if the situation wasn’t rectified as it would go against much of what I believe in and worked for for women in endurance sport.

To do an event that did not support women in any way, wasn’t an option. So I  found a generous donor from the US (who wishes to remain anonymous) to match the top 3 mens prize money for the event this year.

For now, the women stand on equal ground at this event and the seeds have been planted for the BOC to uphold that effort moving forward and I will remain in supporting their efforts.

In the meantime I have a huge task to attend to in getting my ass to the finish of this gargantuan ride. We have been making our way across the country to the start line and the roads are particularly chewed up this year—which for Bhutan—one of the “worse roads in the world countries” is saying lot. Wish me luck!

Back at you soon,

Terri