"Some commentators are still talking about women as if electricity hasn't been invented," leading sports columnist Sally Jenkins wrote for The Washington Post last week regarding the coverage female athletes have endured in Rio.
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"The gap between what women are doing in the Summer Olympics and how they're talked about has never been more glaring."
While local reporting of the Olympics has been measured, news outlets in the United States have come under fire for applauding the husbands of the women competing, comparing their confidence on the world stage to a casual shopping trip and focusing on their bodies.
Australian designer Wendy Fox is also marvelling at the female form in Rio for a project which she hopes will revolutionise the body image debate.
"While watching the London Olympics, I was fascinated by the vast variety in body size and shape amongst the elite female athletes. I was struck by an idea, wouldn't it be interesting to line them all up?"
And she did with her Women's Gold Medalists illustration which collated the height, weight and age data of each of the 276 female winners. After an overwhelming response from academics and influential women she is hoping to the do the same for Rio, except this time, with the the help of the Kickstarter campaign, she will produce a book.
There are some 4700 women competitors taking part in the games, a 6.8 per cent increase in female participation since Sydney in 2000.
"The project is a celebration of the body diversity and the skill and expertise of female athletes, and an illustration that no one body type is more capable or better than another when it comes to competing at the most elite and prestigious levels of athleticism," Fox told Fairfax Media.
She has spent 25 hours sketching Rio winners including American gymnast Simone Biles and the Australian women's rugby sevens side.
"It's a conversation between sport, women and art. I've been told it's a sports science historical record and there's never been such a comprehensive collection of data from female athletes."
Fox takes the measurements from the official Olympics website however statistics for synchronised swimmers, handball players and rhythmic gymnasts are not made available to the public.
A number of schools and international sporting bodies have approached Fox to indicate their desire to use the book should it be created, and the project has been endorsed by NATO's Special Representative for Women, Peace and Security.
