The 2012 games marked the first occasion in which all teams participating had both male and female athletes as Brunei, Qatar, and Saudi Arabia made the additions of female athletes to their Olympic teams. While these three countries have received great scrutiny and often negative publicity in the past for not allowing women to participate in the Olympics, in 1996, there were 23 other countries that barred women from competing in the games. While some claim that a small handful of women in the Olympics means very little in ending discrimination and inequality of women around the world, the International Olympic Committee has a different opinion, “The IOC has been striving to ensure a greater gender balance at the Olympic Games, and today’s news can be seen as an encouraging evolution,” Jacques Rogge, president of the IOC, said in a statement about the participation of Saudi women.