Harriet Harman unveils radical shake-up of events for the 2012 Olympics.

"We need to make sport more equal for women", says Minister.

Speaking at a female-only charity function the Minister for Women outlined details of the new 'Equality in Sport' initiative.

This will lead to mixed-sex races becoming the norm, with adjustments made to the distance or height requirements.

She gave the example of the new mixed 100M where competitors from both sexes will compete on equal terms with men running the full 100 metres and women running 75.

A similar system will appear in events such as the high jump and pole vault where a woman will be considered the winner on equal terms if she achieves 75% or more of the height achieved by her male competitors.

When questioned if this was actually equality and not just altering the rules to make women winners at everything, Ms Harman said

"It is a scientific fact that women are, on average, shorter than men. This is due to their being suppressed and downtrodden for so long but that time has now passed and we are putting these measures in place to make the British Olympics a fairer arena for everyone".

She also took the opportunity to unveil the version of the Olympic Flag that will be used at the 2012 Olympics in London (see picture, right).

She ended the speech by confirming that representatives from all walks of life were on the new event's planning committee and whilst she did concede that this didn't include any men, she pointed out that men were consulted when the committee's membership was decided on but they failed to understand that the way to equality was to give some people an advantage.