A WOMAN'S WORLD, IF ONLY FOR 17 DAYS : '96 OLYMPICS HAVE BEEN A STEP FORWARD.

Byline: Linda Robertson Miami Herald

When Lida Fariman walked down the ramp into Olympic Stadium during the Opening Ceremonies, she blazed a small but symbolically significant trail for other women who have found their way into the Olympic Games barred.

Fariman is a Muslim from Iran. She is the only woman on Iran's Olympic team and the first since the Islamic Revolution of 1979. Not only was she flagbearer, but she led Iran's delegation in the parade seen by a global television audience. Four years ago in Barcelona, the Iranian team refused to walk behind the Spanish woman assigned to carry the placard with the country's name. Iran was the only team that walked behind a male.

Fariman marched in front on July 19, wearing the traditional chador to cover her head and legs. The odd image of Fariman holding a gun during the air rifle competition while wearing her heavy leather shooting jacket and pants over her chador reflected both the progress and the constraints on women in sports.

``The Olympics is our Super Bowl,'' said broadcast commentator Donna DeVarona, who won a gold medal in swimming at the 1964 Olympics, even though her high school didn't have a girls' team. ``It's about stories of struggle and women relate strongly to that.''

A record number of women athletes are competing in the Atlanta Games: 3,700 among 10,800 athletes, 1,000 more than at Barcelona. Women from 165 countries are competing in 21 sports and 97 events, a huge improvement from the 1900 Games, when 19 women from five countries competed in three sports - tennis, golf and yachting.

Women are the stars of these Games and the focus of television coverage. The American women's swimming team upstaged the men. Gymnast Kerri Strug proved that women aren't as fragile as they look. Softball shortstop Dot Richardson won a gold medal Tuesday and began her residency in orthopedic surgery Wednesday, 24 years after a coach told her the only way she could play with the boys was if she stuffed her hair under a cap and pretended to be ``Bob.''

Hortencia Oliva, Brazil's beloved basketball player, brought her baby to the Olympics. Syria's Ghada Shouaa, a women's rights activist, won the title of world's greatest female athlete in the heptathlon. When swimmer Claudia Poll of Costa Rica won her country's second Olympic medal - her sister won the first - the people of San Jose ran out into the streets to celebrate.

While China, Canada and Denmark have more women than men on their Olympic teams, 32 countries did not send any women to Atlanta. Some, such as Haiti and Aruba, simply had no women qualify for any events. Others, such as Saudi Arabia and Kuwait, ban women from their teams.

``In our country, women can work but not play,'' said Abdul Amer of the Kuwaiti delegation. ``They can do some exercises at home. These are our rules. Almost all the Gulf countries have these rules. I do not think we will change them.''

The International Olympic Committee has deliberated the delicate issue of women's rights, sharing its wealth in an effort to develop more opportunities for women in poor nations and using its power to influence nations, particularly Islamic nations, where culture and religion limit women to traditional subservient roles and the Koran prescribes that ``men have authority over women because God has made the one superior to the other.''

``It's a sensitive topic,'' said Anita DeFrantz, one of 11 women among the IOC's 116 members and chair of a task force on women in sport. ``There are fewer countries without any female representation now and in the next Games there will be fewer and by the next Games after that, maybe none. You're talking about some very small countries that can barely afford to come to the Olympics and some countries resistant to seeing women compete. The one country not friendly to the notion of change is Saudi Arabia.''

A Paris-based organization called Atlanta-Plus takes a hard-line stance and has lobbied IOC president Juan Antonio Samaranch to exclude countries that discriminate against women.

``It is gratifying that more women than ever before are competing in Atlanta, but it is a shame that the IOC allows countries that repress women into the Olympics,'' said Annie Sugier, one of the founders of Atlanta-Plus and a nuclear physicist from France. ``It's a contradiction of Olympic principles, the Olympic spirit and the Olympic rules.''

According to the IOC charter, Section 3, Rule 2: ``Any form of discrimination with regard to a country or a person on grounds of race, religion, politics, sex or otherwise is incompatible with belonging to the Olympic movement.'' Atlanta-Plus wants the IOC to ban countries that exclude women the same way it banned South Africa for excluding blacks.

``This is different than South Africa,'' DeFrantz said. ``That was a government that instituted crimes against humanity. The UN banned them. But race is different than religion.''

Carol Anne Letheren, IOC member from Canada, said accusing countries of being backward is the wrong approach.

``We must have sympathy with nations as they try to move into the 21st century,'' she said. ``There are religious and historical traditions that need to be altered, but they have been in place for thousands of years, so they are not going to be swept away quickly.''

The ancient Games were male-only and Baron Pierre de Coubertin did not invite women to the first modern Games in 1896 because he was ``personally against the participation of women in public competitions.'' A Greek woman named Melpomene ran the marathon course anyway, the day before the men did.

After several women collapsed crossing the finish line of the 800 meter run in 1928, no race longer than 200 meters was included until 1960.

Nawal El Moutawakil of Morocco became the first woman from an Islamic nation to win an Olympic gold medal in 1984, in the 400 hurdles. In the same race, P.T. Usha of India became the first Hindu woman to compete, finishing fourth.

When Hassiba Boulmerka of Algeria won her first world title in 1991, she let out a long scream, ``for joy and for shock, for Algeria's pride and Algeria's history and finally for every Algerian woman, every Arabic woman.''

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Photo

Photo: Olympic softball hero Dot Richardson shows off her g old medal in Los Angeles.

Associated Press