The Catch-22 of Women's Sports

[Fang7986]

Well in regards to facilities and such at least in the US Title IX states that men and women sports at schools have to spend the same amount and have equal facilities $/or equipment. Which actually hurts less popular men's sports in some cases because Football here is so big and requires so many people that woman usually have more options and choices so that the total number of men and women competing in athletics at the schools are equal.

[Vynny]

Yeah, that's a hilariously low marker. That's like some pre-teen's are higher low.

Ok, in your vast experience which flies in the face of corroborated statistical data, what is the average female grip strength that you have seen in LBF (Pounds of Force)?

[oxymoronic]

i prefer to watch the best as do most. if women could beat men in sports then i would watch them all day long and actually prefer that...

reminds me of seeing the womens soccer team crying about their earnings compared to the mens. i just want to ask them one question, can you beat the mens teams? the answer is not even close despite women are champions and the mens team is relatively bad compared to the rest of the worlds teams.

[phillys]

I'm not really into sports, but where I am the most common opinion about watching men vs women play a game, usually rugby, cricket or basketball tends to be that watching women play is better for technique and the technical aspects and skills, but the men play more athletically and are better to watch for that. Where all things like participation, facilities, training etc are all equal, as well as time on TV, men's sports tend to be a little more popular, except maybe for tennis, but men on TV tend to get the Prime Time slots. So they get more sponsorship and $$.

[Polyxo]

Ok, in your vast experience which flies in the face of corroborated statistical data, what is the average female grip strength that you have seen in LBF (Pounds of Force)?

Adult female judo players? They all have to average well over 150. I'm well over 200. You would be just a totally incomplete judo player with a grip strength less than that. You couldn't force a sleeve lift or anything like that.

[EliWallach]

Men are stronger, faster, and have more endurance due to biological differences. That results in higher levels in sports, which means more people want to watch men's sports. Even if these differences were only minor (they're not), this also results in massive differences at the top of the sports, where a 1% difference may be what separates a world class player from the fold.

Women can't compete with men and never will. Deal with it.

Some of you people need to stop pretending that "gender is a social construct" and look at this thing called reality. The world isn't fair, and it doesn't care about your feelings.

This is basically it. Look at the thousands and thousands of replays of the greatest athletes on youtube. Those guys are doing things that virtually no other human being can do. That's what draws the masses and justifies the billions spent on professional sports. Women simply cannot provide that level of entertainment.

[Polyxo]

I would love to see a 4'11" football player who weighs 130 lbs. Would be like a kid in Pop Warner getting a chance to play against the college players.

I played through high school as a split end. I wound up training pretty closely with University of Miami. The general idea was that they knew of my dad, who played there years ago, and I was going to show up as "local judo player" to do a little extra training thing on hand-fighting, and stuck around a lot more. I attended team workouts, and I got to know a few of the players at the time pretty well. Even at my size, I'm stronger than the average college defensive back. The limiting factor is my height, where in press, I'm just spending too much time handfighting off the line, and my catching is a lot more gauged towards body catching (on a low target).

[Tijuana]

Let me preface this by saying that this by saying that I acknowledge that this topic is pretty close to the line on gender discussions. If mods feel its too close, or the discussion devolves into gender based bickering, feel free to close it. I would like to see people's opinions on it.

I think everyone can acknowledge that the averaged state of women's sports is pretty inferior to the state of men's sports, organizationally. The NFL, NHL, NBA, etc are all male organizations, and there are no real competing female organizations. A lot of this stems from the lack of comparative female athletes in sports.

Here's where the problem comes in: It's my experience that women's sports, in general, is in a kind of catch-22 situation where the improvement of female athletic competitiveness is dependent on the popularity and support of the sport organizations its based out of, and those organizations are in turn dependent on competitive, superior athletes.

There are two causes of this in my experience. I've participated in sports all the way from club level high school sports, to international amateur and professional combat sports. My experience in general is that the first cause is the difference in facilities, coaching, stakes, employment opportunities, and invested resources in cultivating female athletes at the highest level. From my experience, female athletics generally have a participatory, heavily muted competitive style. In turn, when I trained with UM Football for conditioning, the facilities, pace, attention to detail from coaches and trainers, and nutrition, were in an otherworldly state of better than anything I'd ever seen in women's sports. My immediate thoughts were 'imagine how much some female sports would improve if they had these resources'. The problem, however, is that they're currently not good enough to generate the money to justify spending those resources, so there's the first sticking point.

The second sticking point is participation. In general, and in most big sports, the male talent pool is hundreds to thousands, to tens of thousands of times larger in participation, and especially serious participation. In a lot of sports I've participated in, male teammates would have to progress through dozens of matches and compete through a mile long ladder of competitors to get anywhere, while I would often find myself on a podium just by showing up, or just doing exhibition matches against other male competitors, because there was no one to fight. Again, almost any women's sport would improve drastically by increased participation. However, increased participation is pretty closely linked with better quality performance.

I'm not sure what the best solution is. MMA, Judo and other combat sports benefit heavily from mixed training, and are some of the most egalitarian sports in terms of talent, but the women's sides still lag a couple of decades behind in participation, and subsequent quality. I would suggest greater integration of elementary, middle and high school sports, but that's a minimal solution to begin with.

What are other peoples' thoughts on this?

I think the issues are rooted more in biology and culture, than they are in quality of coaching and facilities. Men have a higher ceiling athletically, due in part to testosterone, as well as sheer size. I also think for whatever reason, men and women do not care to see women compete in that way, and its for cultural reasons, traditional gender roles, etc. However, if I recall correctly, don't some select sports, like women's tennis, get comparable ratings?

[Polyxo]

I think the issues are rooted more in biology and culture, than they are in quality of coaching and facilities. Men have a higher ceiling athletically, due in part to testosterone, as well as sheer size. I also think for whatever reason, men and women do not care to see women compete in that way, and its for cultural reasons, traditional gender roles, etc. However, if I recall correctly, don't some select sports, like women's tennis, get comparable ratings?

Culture's definitely a factor, one that I'm trying to figure out a workaround for. Biology less so. Sheer size will be an issue in some areas. You will find more men in sports where size is an advantage, and in those positions of those sports where its an advantage. Testosterone is overblown, due to the fact that estrogen produces essentially the same effect.

[Deleted]

Yeah, that's a hilariously low marker. That's like some pre-teen's are higher low.

Yeah, you're talking about implicit bias. It is a completely involuntary thing. However, people are able to correct for it when they're aware of it.

It's simple

Women are weaker, slower, etc compared to men

There are simple biological reasons for this, and plenty of studies done confirming it

You've been shown the studies, you choose to disbelieve them

Your choice to be sceptical about them is the same choice a religious person makes when they ignore evolution: it conflicts with what you think things should be like

I've played competitive sports, I watch some competitive sports and women's competition is boring because it's not competitive

Now I don't mind watching women's sports but the men's will always be a higher level of competition, so most people will want to watch the best of the best, not the amateur leagues

--

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/8477683

"The women were approximately 52% and 66% as strong as the men in the upper and lower body respectively. The men were also stronger relative to lean body mass... Data suggest that the greater strength of the men was due primarily to larger fibers. The greater gender difference in upper body strength can probably be attributed to the fact that women tend to have a lower proportion of their lean tissue distributed in the upper body."

[oxymoronic]

I'm not really into sports, but where I am the most common opinion about watching men vs women play a game, usually rugby, cricket or basketball tends to be that watching women play is better for technique and the technical aspects and skills, but the men play more athletically and are better to watch for that. Where all things like participation, facilities, training etc are all equal, as well as time on TV, men's sports tend to be a little more popular, except maybe for tennis, but men on TV tend to get the Prime Time slots. So they get more sponsorship and $$.

really? where is that?

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This is basically it. Look at the thousands and thousands of replays of the greatest athletes on youtube. Those guys are doing things that virtually no other human being can do. That's what draws the masses and justifies the billions spent on professional sports. Women simply cannot provide that level of entertainment.

nothing justifies the amount of money sports make... nothing

[Shelly]

There will never be integration... The strongest and fastest women, physically speaking, are not as strong and as fast as the strongest and fastest men...

Look at the Olympics... Sprinting, weightlifting, etc... Those that compete in such events train their entire lives for that and have their bodies molded from childhood to compete in that one specific area and nothing else...

People don't watch women's sporting events because it will never be as fast as male sporting events. Why would someone go out of their way to watch a LESS COMPETITIVE event? Why would someone want to watch a competition in which all competitors are by default already inferior to the competitors in more competitive events...?

They watch the most competitive sports to see who the absolute best is. They don't care who wins the bush league world series... They don't care who wins the women's world cup... Etc... Etc... Because none of those competitors would stand even the most remote chance against the competitors of the most competitive instance of that event/sport.

Funny, I went to go and look at gymanstics for a better example of hopefully parity between men and women raised in a sport from early childhood - weightlifting and running are terrible examples since most training for weightlifting doesn't really begin until puberty and running they don't like kids doing more than a 5k until age 10 or so.

Anyway from a quick youtube search it would seem that female gymnastics are mostly lower body and balance forms, men's are mostly upper body strength forms. So things like floor routine and vaults and such versus parallel bars and rings.

That being said they do have things like the uneven bars for women, and trust me if you are going to bring up grip strength those ladies have it in spades.

Regardless there are some major physiological differences that come into play regardless of perceived gender roles. That's just a fact, though I have a feeling any woman in the crossfit games as a basic competitor could thrash the floor with every single MMO-Champion poster in any trial of endurance or strength. The nature of high-level competition though tends to only highlight these natural differences, the women work as hard as the men to reach the top levels of their sport and all sports - and especially combat sports - are very selective in terms of fitting competitors to a specific weight class so that the chance of an athlete being injured is lessened.

Kind of lost the track here, sorry.

I think there's a lot of truth that equal funding in facilities would do a lot to bring women's and men's sport closer together, but as the level is raised the differences will continue to be highlighted. Part of it may be through the psychology - men are told it's "ok" to be aggressive, women are not; men are told to be physical when playing a game, women are not; men are told that if they injure someone during sport that it's all part of the game, women are supposed to be more concerned; etc. But there's also the inescapable physiological differences too with regards to muscle mass that only becomes greater as the level rises.

I'd still love to see an NCAA basketball game of the men's Villanova team or the men's North Carolina team face off against the women's Connecticut team. Connecticut dominated EVERYONE this year like a hot chainsaw through butter, so I'd like to see why that was and see them face off against a men's championship caliber team to see what the results would be.

[Vynny]

Adult female judo players? They all have to average well over 150. I'm well over 200. You would be just a totally incomplete judo player with a grip strength less than that. You couldn't force a sleeve lift or anything like that.

Wait wait wait, so you're saying that the studies I gave were wrong when I clearly stated "untrained" or "average" as in not athletes while you were comparing the results to adult female judo players who have extensively trained their gripping muscles? I mean, even the study that I linked that compared athletes didn't say what sort of athletes so the majority could've been soccer players for all we know which wouldn't have as high of grip strength as high level judo players. I mean talk about not comparing like to like. I mean here I am talking about averages, norms, and general athletes and you're sitting their telling me the numbers are wrong because you know women with much higher grip strengths that practice a sport that heavily relies on gripping strength. I mean it's the same as if you were to tell me that the study regarding overall strength was wrong because you know a bunch of power lifters who totally blow the average woman's numbers out of the water. The point of these studies is to find the differences between men and women when it comes to strength and to quantify what the average male or female athletes and non-athletes are capable of, not to compare and quantify what a very specific type of female athlete is capable in a very specific category.

[Powerogue]

Unban steroids, growth hormones, testosterone and other performance-enhancing drugs from women's sports. Then maybe women's sports might get on the level of men's sports and be worthy of watching.

Are those seriously not equally banned for the men's sports?

[Polyxo]

Funny, I went to go and look at gymanstics for a better example of hopefully parity between men and women raised in a sport from early childhood - weightlifting and running are terrible examples since most training for weightlifting doesn't really begin until puberty and running they don't like kids doing more than a 5k until age 10 or so.

Anyway from a quick youtube search it would seem that female gymnastics are mostly lower body and balance forms, men's are mostly upper body strength forms. So things like floor routine and vaults and such versus parallel bars and rings.

That being said they do have things like the uneven bars for women, and trust me if you are going to bring up grip strength those ladies have it in spades.

Regardless there are some major physiological differences that come into play regardless of perceived gender roles. That's just a fact, though I have a feeling any woman in the crossfit games as a basic competitor could thrash the floor with every single MMO-Champion poster in any trial of endurance or strength. The nature of high-level competition though tends to only highlight these natural differences, the women work as hard as the men to reach the top levels of their sport and all sports - and especially combat sports - are very selective in terms of fitting competitors to a specific weight class so that the chance of an athlete being injured is lessened.

Kind of lost the track here, sorry.

I think there's a lot of truth that equal funding in facilities would do a lot to bring women's and men's sport closer together, but as the level is raised the differences will continue to be highlighted. Part of it may be through the psychology - men are told it's "ok" to be aggressive, women are not; men are told to be physical when playing a game, women are not; men are told that if they injure someone during sport that it's all part of the game, women are supposed to be more concerned; etc. But there's also the inescapable physiological differences too with regards to muscle mass that only becomes greater as the level rises.

I'd still love to see an NCAA basketball game of the men's Villanova team or the men's North Carolina team face off against the women's Connecticut team. Connecticut dominated EVERYONE this year like a hot chainsaw through butter, so I'd like to see why that was and see them face off against a men's championship caliber team to see what the results would be.

Well, women are far more equal in participation and funding in gymnastics than other sports, so that's subsequently why. It's why I think that given equal funding and participation, you could integrate most sports, and see cross gender participation on some levels in all of them.

The women's basketball team could not compete against the men's teams. They are not equal in skill and talent, and the point of this thread is not to say that the state of women's sports is equal to men's sports. Rather, it's to say that it will be equal, or competitive if it receives equal participation, funding and dedication, but there are a number of complicated barriers in the way of that.

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Wait wait wait, so you're saying that the studies I gave were wrong when I clearly stated "untrained" or "average" as in not athletes while you were comparing the results to adult female judo players who have extensively trained their gripping muscles? I mean, even the study that I linked that compared athletes didn't say what sort of athletes so the majority could've been soccer players for all we know which wouldn't have as high of grip strength as high level judo players. I mean talk about not comparing like to like. I mean here I am talking about averages, norms, and general athletes and you're sitting their telling me the numbers are wrong because you know women with much higher grip strengths that practice a sport that heavily relies on gripping strength. I mean it's the same as if you were to tell me that the study regarding overall strength was wrong because you know a bunch of power lifters who totally blow the average woman's numbers out of the water. The point of these studies is to find the differences between men and women when it comes to strength and to quantify what the average male or female athletes and non-athletes are capable of, not to compare and quantify what a very specific type of female athlete is capable in a very specific category.

Unless I'm thinking of the wrong study, the context of the article specifically cites judo players as the female athletes they sampled (a sport I'm more than extensively familiar with).

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So what you're saying is you were too small to play college sports. Got it.

Too short, really. Coaches considered bringing me on, considering they had just had an immense amount of success with Roscoe Parrish. However, the target size was just a big negative, not to mention the publicity can of worms bringing a female athlete on would bring, with a team that already had a lot of controversy (this was 2005).

[Bushtuckrman]

I can relate to the story. I remember years ago at the gym the manager who was this very athletic chick in her late 20's who has strength trained all her adult life was visibly butthurt when I was doing squats at the squat rack once and she asked me if I could go set for set with her. She was doing the same weight I was doing (80kg), but she needed a squatter and could only do 5 reps. I was doing it as 15 reps and I told her 'oh this is just my light day as I squat 3 times a week'. She got so visibily flustered as at the time I had only just started going to the gym for 9 months where she was doing it for a good 10 years.

It's just biology, men are naturally stronger cos muh testosterone.

[Independent voter]

Well, women are far more equal in participation and funding in gymnastics than other sports, so that's subsequently why. It's why I think that given equal funding and participation, you could integrate most sports, and see cross gender participation on some levels in all of them.

The women's basketball team could not compete against the men's teams. They are not equal in skill and talent, and the point of this thread is not to say that the state of women's sports is equal to men's sports. Rather, it's to say that it will be equal, or competitive if it receives equal participation, funding and dedication, but there are a number of complicated barriers in the way of that.

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Unless I'm thinking of the wrong study, the context of the article specifically cites judo players as the female athletes they sampled (a sport I'm more than extensively familiar with).

It's odd that you say American football is a sport where women can compete equally with men. Don't you believe the density of men have something to do with their success, sure there are women at 6'5" but they don't have the muscle men do.

Barry Sanders is one of the greatest running backs of all time in the NFL at 5'8" and 200lbs with no fat, can you find a woman with that kind of muscling? Plus he could use his massive upper body strength to push people.

Not only that all that muscle is like armor, it kept him from being injured.

[Shelly]

Well, women are far more equal in participation and funding in gymnastics than other sports, so that's subsequently why. It's why I think that given equal funding and participation, you could integrate most sports, and see cross gender participation on some levels in all of them.

The women's basketball team could not compete against the men's teams. They are not equal in skill and talent, and the point of this thread is not to say that the state of women's sports is equal to men's sports. Rather, it's to say that it will be equal, or competitive if it receives equal participation, funding and dedication, but there are a number of complicated barriers in the way of that.

Actually the reason I looked up Gymnastics was because the sport - to my layman eyes at least - seemed like it would have a lot of cross over. I was actually fairly shocked that it didn't and what it considered "female" verus "male" despite both seeming to require the same skill sets - for example parallel bars (for men) versus uneven bars (for women). The women were given something faster that required a pretty equivalent amount of strength however the strength was applied in different forms/functions. Men were judged more on holding a pose, women on execution it seemed.

Basically I found it funny that a sport like gymnastics where women are considered to excel has a built in sexual bias between the events.

Regarding the NCAA, I agree, but it would be interesting to see just how close they are and frankly I wonder if there's a comment or something by the Conn coach where he may talk about training his team to be more like men - aggressive, possibly greedy even.

In a few years I really think looking at Basketball and Soccer - at least in the US - will given an idea of just how close the two sexes can get on a playing field. Let's face it, the US men's soccer team is kind of pathetic but the women's team has won 3 of the 7 world cups and placed 2nd in one and 3rd in the other three. That's a pretty damn good record and the closest rival is Germany with 2 wins. Soccer, in the US at least, is also one of the most encouraged sports at the moment and shares equal time and equipment for the most part between the sexes at all levels from start to finish as near as I can tell.

[Vynny]

Funny, I went to go and look at gymanstics for a better example of hopefully parity between men and women raised in a sport from early childhood - weightlifting and running are terrible examples since most training for weightlifting doesn't really begin until puberty and running they don't like kids doing more than a 5k until age 10 or so.

Anyway from a quick youtube search it would seem that female gymnastics are mostly lower body and balance forms, men's are mostly upper body strength forms. So things like floor routine and vaults and such versus parallel bars and rings.

That being said they do have things like the uneven bars for women, and trust me if you are going to bring up grip strength those ladies have it in spades.

Regardless there are some major physiological differences that come into play regardless of perceived gender roles. That's just a fact, though I have a feeling any woman in the crossfit games as a basic competitor could thrash the floor with every single MMO-Champion poster in any trial of endurance or strength. The nature of high-level competition though tends to only highlight these natural differences, the women work as hard as the men to reach the top levels of their sport and all sports - and especially combat sports - are very selective in terms of fitting competitors to a specific weight class so that the chance of an athlete being injured is lessened.

Kind of lost the track here, sorry.

I think there's a lot of truth that equal funding in facilities would do a lot to bring women's and men's sport closer together, but as the level is raised the differences will continue to be highlighted. Part of it may be through the psychology - men are told it's "ok" to be aggressive, women are not; men are told to be physical when playing a game, women are not; men are told that if they injure someone during sport that it's all part of the game, women are supposed to be more concerned; etc. But there's also the inescapable physiological differences too with regards to muscle mass that only becomes greater as the level rises.

I'd still love to see an NCAA basketball game of the men's Villanova team or the men's North Carolina team face off against the women's Connecticut team. Connecticut dominated EVERYONE this year like a hot chainsaw through butter, so I'd like to see why that was and see them face off against a men's championship caliber team to see what the results would be.

By no means am I saying that all men are stronger and more athletic than all women. Training will quickly allow most women to outpace a man who doesn't train, but when you look at men and women who have put in similar training, you will rarely see a woman outpace a man, and that's what we're talking about professional male athletes vs. professional female athletes and why their respective leagues receive such different amount of funding, and the basic gist of it is that the men's leagues are more entertaining to watch because the level of athleticism is higher than what the women's leagues can pull off thus they get more viewers thus they get more funding.

Also, I would guess that men's Villanova or North Carolina vs. women's Connecticut would turn out a lot like the U-17 USMNT vs. USWNT where the men's team won 8-2, Karsten Braasch vs. Serena Williams where Karsten won 6-1, Karsten Braasch vs Venus Williams where Karsten won 6-2, or many of the other men vs. women sports matches that have occurred throughout the years.

[Polyxo]

It's odd that you say American football is a sport where women can compete equally with men. Don't you believe the density of men have something to do with their success, sure there are women at 6'5" but they don't have the muscle men do.

Barry Sanders is one of the greatest running backs of all time in the NFL at 5'8" and 200lbs with no fat, can you find a woman with that kind of muscling? Plus he could use his massive upper body strength to push people.

Not only that all that muscle is like armor, it kept him from being injured.

Yes, most that size don't. However, I don't see some limiting factor that prevents women of my build from being that size. I have that kind of muscling. While I've probably waned a good bit. Looking at a chart, I would be tied for 21st in the combine among defensive backs for the 225 lbs press this year. I'm not a freak, there are other women like me.