Why do girls run shorter distances in long distance?

Late 90's we did 1500 & 800, and xc we did the same as the boys in school. I'm also sure we did 400, but that could have just been in lessons, but wouldn't swear to it either way as I was always long distance.

I do have a vague memory of the older boys doing maybe a 2000 & something or a 3000 & something as well, but I'm sure that was only in pe lessons.

another was that they were not sure how to manage menstruation

They covered this on a QI No Such Thing as a Fish podcast recently (probably the same place I heard about the suits).
Apparently the men at NASA had no clue how many tampons would need per month. If I recall correctly, they massively over-estimated.
And it sounded like they were too embarrassed to ask!

I did quite a lot of cross country and athletics and did exactly the same distances as boys, even trained together - state school Scotland late 90s. For the school awards there was a points based adjustment score for age/sex much like the algorithm Parkrun uses now.

However, we did get to choose which PE we did and girls chose dance/ step reebok more and almost never basketball.

Yes, I believe space suits was another. Another was that women would be a distraction and yet another was that they were not sure how to manage menstruation and they were worried about the effects of space on menstruation. The main reason was that all astronauts were recruited from the air force and women were not allowed to be fighter pilots - although whether this was accidental or a deliberate strategy to exclude women I don't know.

Girls weren't allowed to do triple jump in case their uterus fell out.

I did the 400 35 years ago but now they have the 300

The astronaut peeing story sound apocryphal at best or just outright made up.
I could attempt to list all the reasons why they didn't allow women in space, but I'm sure inability to pee wasn't one of them.
(Although, thinking about it appropriately sized space suits might be. I did remember hearing that at one time, all the space suits were made in one go, at great expense, and the same ones or at least the same batch were used for many years. If they were made man-sized, that may be yet another excuse).

I think toilets on the early Mercury and Gemini missions were different and a little more primitive than those on the ISS :).

www.quora.com/How-do-astronauts-pee-in-zero-gravity-on-the-ISS

I don't see why women peeing in space would ever have been a problem. You don't need gravity to pee, just to collect it...

Boys and girls do run different distances at my kids schools, and have different targets for "gold" "silver" and "bronze" for all the events (different distance jumped/ thrown/ different time target)

This has led DC2 to many "its so unfair" rants this year (sour grapes as he failed to get a gold medal for the first time and thinks its unfair because he met the gold target for girls in his age group and for boys in the age group below - he reluctantly stopped ranting when I pointed out he is taller and stronger than pretty much all the girls and definitely all the boys in the age group below at his small school, and not due to any hard work on his behalf! Silly child!)

Fascinating. So I suppose you get the urge to pee, but even, inside your own body, it's not coming down because no gravity, right?

I think the issue was making sure that it went down the funnel / tube rather than floating around in globules.

I'm sure they were warned not to use it for wanking ... :)

Turquoise I am not sure when the rule changed? All I know is that it's to do with 400m being too long to sprint but not a longer distance - apparently this can have an adverse effect on younger females' hearts. Our H of PE was quite sympathetic when we complained, but said it was the rule and he couldn't change it.

Fascinating. So I suppose you get the urge to pee, but even, inside your own body, it's not coming down because no gravity, right?

Although if they can fashion some kind of device for men, I don't see why they couldn't do it for women.

Unless, of course, they thought there might be the possibility of the device for men being used for things other than just peeing?

Another memo I would like to have seen. The Wanking Issue.

I think the original device was a suction funnel of sorts, and nappies for faecal matter? I'm not sure. I've been doing some googling and there is some interesting material up there re women in some of the endurance tests (and how well they did).

But it works pretty much the same for both men and women. Apart from a little leg dampness maybe in zero gravity.

I would love to have seen that memo. We can't send women to the moon because of leg dampness.

... sorry, I should have said 'a' reason - not the only one.

I haven't Snopsed it, but I did hear that that was the reason!

he could not find a way for women to wee in zero-gravity.

Tell me that's not true!

It's almost as if we have different physiology to men, or something...

I do get this in some contexts, such as hurdles, but whereas I don't think that women and men should compete together I also wonder if some of the restrictions on girls/women that used to exist or currently exist are more the result of assumptions about women and girls based on stereotypes than they are about real physiological issues. I don't see why women can't run as far as men, for example. In fact, in the 80s, I remember reading as part of my women's studies course a text that debunked a lot of the physiological myths about women. For example, I recall reading about studies that showed that women's endurance in some sports (might have running??) was greater than men's and that women had outperformed men on many tests that they gave prospective astronauts, but that, of course, they were rejected for space travel because although 'man' could send man to the moon he could not find a way for women to wee in zero-gravity.

I did 1500m at school about a billion years ago. Surely any concern about 'bones developing' or 'heart development' would favour girls doing longer distances earlier in puberty? Don't girls finish growing etc generally at an earlier age than boys? Somebody on here mentioned girls stopped within a year of menses I think.
I would suspect the reason is actually something similar to why the longest Olympic distance is the marathon: because after that, the chances of women beating men become greater as the distance increases.

I'm sure at my school we did different distances - I think the boys' longest was 1500m and girls' was 800m. I can't be too sure as I spent more time trying to avoid participation than paying attention to what was actually happening.

Girls don't do 400m due to their heart development being different to boys'. Made a right idiot of myself when I got two girls in my t group to write a letter of complaint to the Head of PE in our school, only to discover it was medically based rather than sexism. To be fair, this was 20 odd years ago - may no longer be the case?

According to the most recent No Such Thing as a Fish podcast, women's tennis balls at Wimbledon are lighter.
Or rather men's are heavier, because their serves were becoming too fast so they made the balls heavier to slow them down a bit.

It was the case when I was a youngster (many moons ago) and did reasonably serious athletics meets. Eg girls were still doing 300m whilst boys of the same age were doing 400m. Girls couldn't do triple jump (it was only recently introduced as a women's event at professional level)

Women still do the heptathlon rather than the decathlon, and their hurdles are lower and over 100m rather than the men's 110m hurdles which are really high (because of greater height and stride length). It was only in 2008 that the women's steeplechase became an Olympic event, and the hurdles / obstacles are lower than the mens.

Women also use light javelins, shots, hammers etc.

It's almost as if we have different physiology to men, or something...

It was certainly the case for the cross country races run between Leeds City Schools, at least at u18 level in the early 90s. No idea what the reasoning was. They used to run the u18 races together and the girls just peeled off a lap early, so I can tell you that at least some of them were faster than me, a middle-of-the-field boy.