Abstract Women in the olympics - A quantitative and qualitative analysis of the representation and portayal of female athletes in the olympics The purpose of the study was to examine how often female athletes occur in swedish sports media and how they are portrayed, in comparison to male athletes. The years studied was 1996 and 2016. Since the female participants increased over those twenty years it was interesting to see if the media followed that development. The study is based on earlier research such as Natalie Koivula and her concepts of the trivialization, infantilization and ambivalens of female athletes. Some theories used in the study is agenda setting, discourse analysis and different gender theories by, among others, Hirdman, Butler and Conell & Pearse. A quantitative and a qualitative analysis has been used in order to determine the representation and portrayal of female athletes. Over 400 articles about the olympics from the newspapers Aftonbladet and Expressen was coded using a content analysis to identify how often female athletes occur in comparison to men. For the discourse analysis 12 articles, three from every newspaper and year was coded using both theories and earlier research. The result shows that there was a difference in both representation and portrayal between men and women in 1996, with men overrepresented in both team sports and individual sports. In 2016 there the results show a complete reversal with women overrepresented in all sports. There was a clear difference in the portrayal of female and male athletes in 1996, where womens looks were described more often than their sporting efforts. In 2016 however the portrayal of women were more similar to men, with a few exceptions. The results of the study from 1996 can be explained by the patriarchal structures that our society is built on. Although the patriarchy still is present it is clear to see that feminism and gender issues have affected the society over the last twenty years, giving female athletes a better chance to be represented and portrayed equally to male athletes.