Sports and sex segregation

What about Equestrian sports?

In all the Olympic Equestrian disciplines, women compete on equal terms with men.

Charlotte Du Jardin charlottedujardin.co.uk/ is the best dressage rider in the world, and holds a lot of world records in the sport, competing directly against men. Obviously dressage is a sport where technique and mental attributes count for more than brute strength, as regardless of how strong you are, the horse will always be stronger :p. I would say high level dressage competitions are usually made up of roughly equal teams of men and women.

Pippa Funnell [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pippa_Funnell] is the only ever winner of the Rolex Grand Slam in Eventing- meaning she won the Badminton, Kentucky and Burghley events in one year. Several men have won two out of three, but no-one else has succeeded yet. Again, I would say that eventing is a sport with a good mix of women and men at the top levels, and certainly one with a huge number of female role models.

I think if you want to give girls positive role models in sport, getting them into horse sports is the way forwards.

I think, in some sports, for example athletics, which are mainly testing one physical attribute, men and women can't really compete in the same competitions.

Other sports, which are more of a mixture could be contested in mixed competitions.

recent snooker

"Reanne Evans loses to Ken Doherty in Worlds qualifier

Reanne Evans has failed in her bid to become the first woman to play in the main draw of the World Championship.
England's 10-time ladies' champion, 29, put up a thrilling fight but lost 10-8 to 1997 world champion Ken Doherty in the first qualifying round."

Good stuff!

Snooker the tables are massive and women are generally shorter and so that makes it trickier if you haven't got the reach. Also it is not a "female friendly" atmosphere and less so now that bloke who used to do the boxing has got hold of it and got women in skimpy clothes parading around for no apparent reason (at least there were when I saw it a few years back just after he started).

I used to be shit-hot at pool though

I don't think there are any bars to women competing in the major tournaments in snooker (I may be wrong) but that they simply don't qualify HOWEVER the women's game is coming on.

I think the OP (who I don't think is a troll fwiw) is getting a bit of an unfair kicking here. I don't think she has articulated it especially well but I suspect that the nub of her thinking is that, if men's and women's sport were truly integrated then over time the gap would narrow. This could in part be a result of exchange of know how between men's and women's sport. But I think that, if you were to make sports unisex, in most disciplines, talented women would find a way of competing.

First, I think it's possible to overstate the physical differences. The women's 100m sprint record is only 109% of the men's. The gap is closer in endurance events.

Second, and particularly in some team sports, there are plenty of top players who key attributes are not physical, but are mental, technical and/or tactical. Just taking the recent history of the England football team for example, off the top of my head, all of Teddy Sheringham, Paul Gascoigne, Glenn Hoddle, Nigel Clough and Peter Beardsley all had fantastic careers without being any sort of natural athlete. You could even put Beckham in this category, who wasn't quick or strong (his main phyiscal attribute - which people tend not to recognise because it's not sexy - was that he could run all day, but a woman could emulate that.

Also look at cricket. There's also no physical reason why a woman couldn't be a world-class opening batsman, spin bowler or wicketkeeper. Maybe in mixed cricket women could carve these out as their niches - with the big hitting middle order batting, and fast bowling, positions being more male-dominated.

Now if I'm honest, intuitively I'm not sure I buy into the above, but I hope the above persuades one or two people that the OP's position is not as daft as everyone's making out.

Shall I mention again the differential of prize money in snooker?

"A horse can outrun a man does that mean a horse is superior. No. It means it can run faster."

Nice one Vivienne.

"Blacks"

The reason that women are not represented / under represented in games and sports and activities that do not involve physical strength are due to a variety of reasons including no / little investment, no / little encouragement or roles models, playing "catch up" where a few decades ago we weren't allowed to compete, not getting the best coaches / trainers, and so on and so forth.

I suspect this is not an entirely genuine question though.

What fun on a Sunday afternoon to go to a Feminism board on a predominantly female website and try to get the posters to "admit" that yes actually women are shit.

So women are to compete against men in all sports hence they won't win many medals. Then you'll have even more to whine about. A horse can outrun a man does that mean a horse is superior. No. It means it can run faster.

Did you enjoy the canada- China game last night, OP?

there are many active sports where both genders can compete on equal terms. But they don't involve running about, kicking balls or throwing things, hence we never hear of them. That said, could footie have mixed teams? (it's of no interest to me so I'm not sure what is involved, although I know it needs fitness and agility)

equestrian sport, archery and sailing are the three that come immediately to mind. Plenty of others.

for some sports it won't work though. That's how it is.

At the London 2012 games the winning time in the women's race was 2 hours 23 min. This would place her in 64th in a combined race.

Sorry lost half my post

Chunky the above link shows how athletes have got faster largely due to surface and other improvement - the 1936 Olympics was still thrilling though, no doubt!

Close rivalries (eg Graf/Seles) or a magnetic outstanding performer (eg Bolt) make sport interesting along with national/team loyalty. Speed of serve or maximum distance of ball kick are components but by no means all!

The interesting thing to consider, and I don't know the answer here is what sport would look like if it hadn't always been men in charge. The point of sport and sporting competition was to exercise the male body, and compete men / teams of men against each other. Men and women have different bodies in terms of where they are strong and where they are not. It's not surprising that women and girls are not good at things that showcase male physiology. I wonder what sport would look like if it had been invented by and for women?

There's no way of knowing obviously and possibly it would look just the same and possibly the things would be different but men would still be better at them!

Think so whirlpool

This is good
www.ted.com/talks/david_epstein_are_athletes_really_getting_faster_better_stronger/transcript?language=en

This OP and subsequent posts sounds incredibly familiar. Have you posted on this topic, and made the same argument before, op?

x_posts

I suspect BlackRider made the point more elegantly than me