In the run-up to the Olympic Games in Paris, an exhibition entitled "Women at the Games" will open on Monday at the French Institute in Zagreb.

The exhibition portrays all stages of women’s struggle for equal participation in the prestigious sporting event worldwide. Divided into six chronological and thematic units, it follows 130 years of contemporary society through the stories of legendary women with unique biographies, according to the exhibition’s announcement.

“Women and the Olympic Games have long had a contradictory and even hostile destiny. Virtually excluded from the Olympic movement during its modern renaissance at the end of the 19th century, female athletes took decades to gradually take their rightful place in sport in general and the Olympic Games in particular,” it says.

Dedication to female athletes from France and all over the world

The exhibition aims to highlight as many women as possible who have played an important role in sport and social development, including Alice Milliat, the founder of the World Women’s Games in 1922, great French and foreign athletes such as Christine Caron, Marie-José Pérec, Laura Manaudou and, more recently, Clarissa Agbegnenou and Simone Biles.

For the first time in Paris, 50 per cent of the 10,500 registered athletes from 206 countries will be women.

France is organising the Summer Olympics for the third time in history, after 1900 and 1924 in Paris, and the Paralympic Games for the first time.

The exhibition will be open until 18 August.