In the run-up to the Rio 2016 Olympics there has been a steady stream of articles looking at issues such as water quality - for rowing, sailing and open-water swimming - and the risk of athletes contracting the Zika virus through mosquito bites.

To date, most of the top male golfers have pulled out of coming to Rio, with many of them suggesting the risk of catching Zika was too great. A couple of top male tennis players and cyclists have also pulled out for the same reason. World number five tennis player Simona Halep is one of a very small number of top female athletes to cite Zika as a reason for withdrawal.

The virus itself is not supposed to be too bad; most concerns are around its after-effects, particularly for pregnant women. But as this article from the Lancet Infectious Diseases journal points out, the actual risk of catching Zika appears to be relatively low. Most commentators have cottoned on to this and the majority opinion appears to be that the golfers, tennis stars and cyclists who have pulled out of the Olympics have done so because winning an Olympic gold isn't a priority for them.

Indeed it's notable that all the top female golfers - playing on the same course as the men, and arguably with more to lose if they did contract Zika - are still attending. So are most of the tennis players, and the female cyclists. And every other top athlete in other sports who's fit and healthy.

After every Olympic Games there tends to be an uptick in participation, particularly where a country's athletes have had success in a sport which gets less coverage in non-Olympic years. That's where sports such as golf and cycling (for men) don't need the profile. But for women, the opposite is true. The women's competitions in sports such as cycling and golf don't get the coverage or the cash which the men's versions do and having them at the Olympics is key.

The introduction of rugby sevens, for example, has already paid off. Participation in women's rugby has risen dramatically, partly as a result of rugby sevens making its debut this year, and just this week the Rugby Football Union announced it was introducing a number of professional contracts for female players. The number of contracts is small - 16 full-time with a 15-a-side focus, 16 part-time with a sevens focus, and 16 short-term contracts - but it's a step in the right direction and having rugby sevens at the Olympics will definitely boost the sport's profile for women too.

The International Olympic Committee says it's committed to gender diversity and an increasing number of sports at the Tokyo 2020 games will be gender-equal, including rowing (prompting a lot of thinking about which of the eight men's events you scrap to ensure that there'll be the same number of women racing as men).

So we're left with a bit of a catch-22 situation. Any new sport must have an equal number of places for men and women, but few sports are equal when it comes to profile and participation levels - yet. If we want to get more women playing golf or rugby or cycling then there arguably is a place for them at the Olympics in the same way as there's a place for swimming, athletics, gymnastics and all the other sports more traditionally associated with the Games.

In fact, the Olympics is not really the problem here; the problem lies in the every-day running of these sports. We're back to the same old argument about coverage leading to sponsorship leading to professionalisation leading to participation leading to quality, which leads to coverage ... Someone somewhere has to take the leap, put in the cash and support the women's sides of these sports to the same extent as the men's. Until then, I suspect we'll continue to see the top female athletes in the more professionalised sports support their sport's inclusion at the Olympics to a greater extent than their male counterparts. And I hope those who are coming to Rio have an amazing, successful time of it at what I think will be a hugely enjoyable Games in a really exciting, vibrant city.