There is a difference between an Olympic sport, which is voted on by all IOC members (not just those with Winter Olympic sports) and a discipline and event which is the responsibility of the Executive Board. I'm quite sure that women's hockey is considered an event in the sport of ice hockey and will not be subject to a direct vote as softball was.
Nevertheless, the women’s game will not help ice hockey with evaluation criteria such as popularity based on press coverage, TV ratings, spectator attendance or worldwide competitiveness, where it fails miserably. Fortunately, the IOC 's evaluation criteria, in addition to these, appear to give considerable weight to participation in World Championships and Olympic qualification. With five divisions of World Championships involving 30 teams from five continents, and an additional 8 countries that participated in Olympic qualification tournaments, the IIHF will be able to report broad geographic participation for women’s ice hockey.
Gender equity is also one of the evaluated categories but I'm not sure how the results are interpreted. Is poor gender equity a reason to eliminate a sport as a punishment to its federation or keep the sport to support the minority gender? What will be evident in the gender comparison will be the lack of a Junior World Championship for women.
The bottom line, as I see it, is that women’s hockey cannot be eliminated by the same evaluation and vote that was softball’s demise without men’s hockey going too. And that’s not about to happen. Let’s hope that the IOC Executive Board is pleased enough with IIHF’s report to the IOC Session to not take it upon itself to eliminate women’s ice hockey as an event. Perhaps it’s time for the IIHF to start a U18 or U20 World Championship.
