By all accounts, women have fared much more poorly than men during the COVID-19 pandemic. But a couple of events in the past few days may have heartened women a bit.

First came the Olympics. Then came the finding by New York Attorney General Letitia James that Andrew Cuomo had behaved badly — how’s that for understatement? — toward women while governor of the Empire State.

This isn’t a sports column, but with all the whoop-de-do in Tokyo, the Olympics loomed large in the news. I was among those who thought it better to cancel the Games, but it’s hard to resist the lure of people doing what they do better than anyone else in the world.

This doesn’t ease the burden of millions of women who can’t return to work outside the home because of family responsibilities or the millions who return to jobs (retail, nursing, teaching) that expose them to people who reject the common sense of vaccination.

Still and all, we saw progress for women.

First, the Olympics. At the end of Thursday night’s events, women had won 55 of the 91 medals won by Americans. Male and mixed teams had won 36.

As things started out, though, I thought I saw malaise — that’s the word used to sum up President Carter’s “Crisis of Confidence” speech in 1979 — among American athletes.

The women’s basketball team, which is trying for a seventh straight gold medal, lost exhibitions games to the Australian national team and to a WNBA All-Stars team. The women’s soccer team scored one goal in its first two Olympic games. And the women’s gymnastics team didn’t win everything in sight. For the first time since 1972, the U.S. won no gold medals on opening day. Not looking so good.

But as American women won medals in sports that other countries had dominated, the worm began to turn. Lee Kiefer is the first American to win fencing gold medal in individual foil. Anastasija Zolotic won America’s first gold in taekwondo. American Tamyra Mensah-Stock is the first Black woman to win gold in wrestling. Jessica Parratto and Delaney Schnell are the first U.S. pair to medal in synchronized diving at 10 meters. Krysta Palmer is the first American woman individual medalist in diving since 2000.

Not to mention that the first-ever medalist for San Marino is a woman; a Bermudian woman won the triathlon, Bermuda’s first medal in 40 years; and a woman was the Philippines’ first gold winner.

Let’s bring it back home. Two women with deep histories in basketball at the University of Maine reached the highest levels of their sport.

Kim Corbitt, who played for the Black Bears 2001-05, was hired as senior vice president, People and Culture by the Phoenix Sun of the NBA. Ednisha Curry, twice an assistant coach at UMaine, was hired as an assistant coach of  the Portland Trailblazers, the only major league pro team in the wrong Portland.

Among her honors at UMaine, Corbitt was America East Conference player of the year in 2005. She entered the UMaine Sports Hall of Fame in 2010. She earned a 3.6 GPA in a dual major of mathematics/biological engineering. She headed a department in human resources at Procter & Gamble and all of HR at a big hardware wholesaler. She was high school basketball coach of the year in Cincinnati and founded Girls & Grit, an afterschool program of academics and sports for disadvantaged girls.

Disclosure: Kim is one of my favorite-ever Black Bears, and we have spoken several times since she graduated.

Curry in 2018-20 was the only female assistant coach of a Division I men’s college team. Before that, she was an assistant coach for the women’s team. She co-wrote an op-ed article in The New York Times about women coaching men. A look into the future.

Cuomo’s fall — can he survive politically? — is another in a long line of men disgracing themselves by mistreating women. It’s a high-water mark in the unmasking of those men.

Because this sort of incident most often happens in private, a possibility always exists that a woman charging impropriety could have an ulterior motive. But, as with disgraced moviemaker Harvey Weinstein, the preponderance of evidence against Cuomo — including testimony by two women who hadn’t gone public earlier — was damning.

Fittingly, when he leaves office before his term is up he’ll be replaced by a woman. The only way he can salvage any reputation is to quit before he is impeached. The good that can come of it is that more men in power will learn. You can run but you can’t hide.

Early in the pandemic, Bob Neal respected Cuomo, who seemed to be fighting for his people, which we couldn’t say for the president du jour. But, what else was Cuomo up to? Neal can be reached at [email protected].