RIO DE JANEIRO—Goddesses, wreathed in gold and silver and bronze.

A panoply of lady Olympians who’ve brought Canada all 12 of the medals won in the first week of the Summer Games.

XII medallions for the XX chromosome side.

Grrrrl power in the pool, the rowing boat basin, the synchronized diving platform, the velodrome, the rugby sevens pitch. Without them, as the sun set on Day 8, Canada would have been zero for Rio.

Celebrated at home and podium saluted here, latest among the decorated gang that captured bronze Saturday in track cycling team pursuit.

An equality of opportunity if a glaring inequality in the sum result, all yin and no yang.

And the females, unlike our prime minister’s gerrymandered cabinet selection, didn’t have their laurels handed to them on a pewter platter.

“I’m so impressed with some of the clutch performances, in the synchronized diving when they came through on the fifth dive, in the team pursuit today,” said chef de mission Curt Harnett, himself a former pedal-pushing Olympic medalist. “And the way the swimmers in the pool have delivered time and time again.”

To be clear, Harnett has little enthusiasm for playing the gender game. “I’ve never really thought of it on those terms, though it’s certainly been a unique thing here, with their dominance in results.

“Ultimately, I’d like to think that Canada provides for young girls a field of play that later translates into valid international sports opportunities.

“A bright, confident attitude and amazing spirit that I certainly never had at the age of 16, 17, 18.”

To be fair, the schedule in the first half of the Olympics fortnight has favoured Canadian females over males, especially with so many distances and strokes contested in the pool, where teenager Penny Oleksiak, unheralded no more, scooped a hardware quartet in individual and relay events, pressing her finger down firmly on the gender scale.

Males will have their day, no doubt, in Week 2. Among the top-drawer XY team prospects: kayakers Mark de Jonge and Adam van Koeverden, sprint hotshot Andre de Grasse and the 4X100 relay squad, pole vaulter Shawn Barber, high jumper Derek Drouin, and Damian Warner in the decathlon.

That’s from the bunch of whom much is expected. Who knows if some obscure guy will emerge from anonymity, as did Oleksiak? That’s but one of the beauties of sports: the not knowing, the fickleness of fortune.

The stars aligned for the ladies. (I use the word with no sexist slant. Unlike some of the girlie-girl language, so infantilizing and pink-ish, uncorked from the time capsule this week to describe our Olympic “heroines.” To wit: the Chicago Tribune referring to trap bronze winner Corey Cogdell-Unrein as “the wife of a Bears lineman” without bothering to use her name. Or the NBC commentator who gave the credit for Hungarian swimmer Katinka Hosszu’s record-setting gold medal to her husband/coach, forgetting who was in the water doing the hard laps.)

Chauvinist troglodytes aside, what’s most significant, perhaps, is that, in this moment, it’s uber cool to be a female athlete in a country, Canada, where boys to men usually get all the coverage, certainly nearly all the TV time — females accounting for just 4 per cent of 2014 programming on Canada’s primary national sports networks, according to a study released in March by the Canadian Association for Advancement of Women and Sports.

Actually, I do the eye-roll thing at agenda-driven special interest cabals teeing off on the media; can picture the CAAWS poring over newspapers to measure copy inches for female athletes versus male athletes (5 per cent of national print media coverage for the distaff contingent, as per the above-mentioned report).

Fact: Coverage is driven by interest, particularly in pro sport leagues. Hence all those pages and air time devoted to the NHL and NBA and Major League Baseball. Pursuits such as tennis, I suspect, would come out even, or influenced by who’s having a particularly good season.

With the Olympics, it’s different. In a self-contained two-week period, women can shine as brightly — in Canada’s case, they’re really shimmering and strutting — as their male counterparts. Casual viewers whose interest is piqued by the spectacle of the Games are likely just as one-off keen on women’s events as men’s.

And they’ve probably seen more of the women at that: Team Canada has a 60-40 gender split in Rio — 186 females, most ever, surpassing the 163 from London 2012, including women vying in three team sports — basketball, rugby, soccer – compared to two (track and field, volleyball) for men. Thirty-seven members of the athletics team are women; 28 men. Twenty women qualified in swimming; 10 men. Five females in gymnastics; a sole male. Full complement of women in wrestling and track cycling, unlike their male counterparts.

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What we’ve seen in the females — Canada and every other country represented here — is strong, competitive, physically confident girls and women, the spear end of a culture where the long-ago “gentler sex” is permitted, encouraged, to feel comfortable in their bodies.

“I think it’s great what we are showing Canada,” said 20-year-old Kylie Masse, the day after taking bronze in the 100-metre backstroke. “Just knowing that woman are equally as strong and powerful as anyone else.’’

It isn’t just happenstance, however, that Canada’s women have performed so splendidly here. They were targeted, by their sports organization and by Own the Podium funding. Not because of their gender, specifically, but because of intensely scrutinized medal potential as determined by their own records and the depth of field in their events.

“We knew that in the first week of the Games, there was a significantly higher percentage of medal potential for the women,” Anne Merklinger, CEO of Own the Podium, told the Star on Saturday.

“It was done pretty deliberately, working with the sports federations to target the best medal opportunities. In that sense, we’ve strategically targeted women’s events.’’

There’s only so much funding money — for coaches, for training — to go around. Even B2ten, a privately funded enterprise that supports Canadian Olympians — wants return on their investment by prioritizing sports and athletes.

So Swim Canada, as an example, worked intensely with OTP, to identify high-return prospects in the pool, after collecting only three medals in London four years ago (one in open water). Which is why, Merklinger notes, Oleksiak’s big splash in Rio came as no surprise within the sports politburo, although she was barely known to the non cognoscenti, maybe not even properly appreciated within the national swim team.

“Penny was very clearly identified as medal potential, a key athlete involved in our strategy,” says Merklinger. “Having her in the relay was an important element in the preparation strategy.”

They started by culling athletes who’d finished top 12 in London. Then they looked at events where the field was less chockablock with elite contenders, such as incoming women’s rugby sevens. That approach, as a matter of course, tilted toward female sports because there are fewer participants globally and not so crowded at the apex. “Depth and composition,” explains Merklinger. Recruiting for national programs with an eye on Rio and beyond to 2020, 2024.

Success in the recent past breeds success in the future, Merklinger points out. “After Canadian women won bronze in London, soccer has blossomed in Canada. Girls saw that and they said: ‘I want to be like them.’ So you build on this opportunity and the momentum within that sport. You inspire others.’’

As six-time Olympic medallist Clara Hughes tweeted after Oleksiak’s fourth medal: “Girls in Canada, meet your new role model. U can be all that u dream to be.”

Sure. But no reason why lads can’t be inspired by Oleksiak, too.

You go, boys.