As a Norwegian - raised in a winter-sports culture - and with the next Winter Olympics approaching, I wanted to build this report for the Winter Olympics and give it a clear winter feel in both theme and design❄️ While exploring the data, gender representation stood out as a strong lens: it’s measurable, historically meaningful, and still full of nuance even when the headline number looks positive.
I tried to follow the structure of Context -> Insights -> Impact.
CONTEXT
The report opens by comparing women’s participation at the start of the Winter Olympics to today. The overall trend is clear: we’ve moved from very low representation to near parity, with female participation now close to 50%.
INSIGHTS
From there, the report explains how we got here. A timeline highlights key milestones and program changes that align with major increases in women’s participation.
Next, the country view shows who has been closest to parity - often with surprising results. Seeing North Korea near the top, alongside China and Russia, challenges many assumptions. Even more striking is that Norway appears to lag behind several nations on female participation share during certain periods. That contrast is especially interesting for journalists and analysts who want storylines beyond medals.
Finally, the discipline view breaks down parity by sport, showing that “near equality overall” doesn’t mean equality everywhere - some disciplines are consistently closer to balance than others. In addition, the report includes a view of women’s events over time, showing a clear upward trend across Olympic editions.
DATA NOTES
A few disciplines were excluded due to data quality issues (including ice hockey, bobsleigh, and curling). There are also known limitations in the medals data - for example, some athletes’ totals in the dataset don’t match publicly known counts (such as Marit Bjørgen). Rather than patching the dataset manually and introducing inconsistencies, I chose to work transparently with the available data and focus on patterns that remain valid within it.
IMPACT
The final section reframes parity as more than a percentage: it highlights outcomes. One way to visualize the impact is to spotlight great female Olympians who competed - and excelled - as opportunities expanded. To make that section engaging, the “Greatest of All Time” view uses an interactive weighting model, letting the audience decide what matters most (medal count, medal quality, or longevity) and showing how the ranking changes based on those choices.
Marius
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