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Sexism leads to fewer medals. New research reveals that gender equality leads to more Olympic medals for both men and women.

After analyzing the prizes won in Olympic Games, researchers at the University of British Columbia found that countries with greater gender equality, particularly educational equality, had greater medal counts.

The latest study involved data from 121 counties and their medal counts from the London 2012 Olympic Games and the Sochi 2014 Olympic Winter Games. Even after accounting for factors such as income equality, gross domestic product, population and latitude, researchers found that gender equality really did boost the Olympic medial counts.

"Amazingly, gender equality was the most significant and robust predictor of a country's Olympic success after gross domestic product," researcher Jennifer Berdahl, a Professor at Sauder School of Business, said in a news release.

"In societies with rigid gender roles, women are encouraged to be demure and men who are considered feminine are selected out early when it comes to sport," said Berdahl. "When there's more equality, performance rises to the surface as the prime indicator of who should advance to elite levels of athletics."

The findings will be published in the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology.