Women's 200 metres at the Games of the XVI Olympiad
Venue	Melbourne Cricket Ground
Date	November 29–30, 1956
Competitors	27 from 12 nations
Winning time	23.4
Medalists
Betty Cuthbert  Australia Christa Stubnick  United Team of Germany Marlene Mathews-Willard  Australia
← 1952 1960 →

Athletics at the 1956 Summer Olympics
Track events
100 m	men	women
200 m	men	women
400 m	men
800 m	men
1500 m	men
5000 m	men
10,000 m	men
80 m hurdles		women
110 m hurdles	men
400 m hurdles	men
3000 m steeplechase	men
4 × 100 m relay	men	women
4 × 400 m relay	men
Road events
Marathon	men
20 km walk	men
50 km walk	men
Field events
Long jump	men	women
Triple jump	men
High jump	men	women
Pole vault	men
Shot put	men	women
Discus throw	men	women
Javelin throw	men	women
Hammer throw	men
Combined events
Decathlon	men
v t e

The women's 200 metres competition at the 1956 Summer Olympics in Melbourne, Australia was held at the Olympic Stadium on November 29–30.^[1] The winning margin was 0.3 seconds.

At home, Australia got three athletes into the final, led by already 100 metres champion Betty Cuthbert. Running in lane 5, with 100 metres silver medalist Christa Stubnick to her outside in lane 6, Cuthbert took an early lead making up the stagger on Stubnick more than 20 metres before the end of the turn. By the time they were all on the straightaway, she had a meter lead on Stubnick with no competition coming from the inside. She widened it to three metres by the finish. The race for bronze was more competitive as the other semi-final winner, June Foulds had opened up a metre lead over the other two Australians through the turn, but both were gaining. 50 metres out, Norma Croker caught Foulds marginally ahead, but Marlene Mathews-Willard continued to gain, opening up a meter on her compatriot by the finish, to take bronze. It was the same finish order as the 100 metres.

The women's 200 metres competition started with six heats, where the fastest two from each heat qualified to one of the two semifinals groups. The three fastest runners from each semifinals group advanced to the final.

Prior to the competition, the existing World and Olympic records were as follows.

World record	Betty Cuthbert (AUS)	23.2	Sydney, Australia	September 16, 1956
Olympic record	Marjorie Jackson (AUS)	23.4	Helsinki, Finland	July 26, 1952