Stats on why we have women and men sports?

www.alltime-athletics.com/m_100ok.htm
www.alltime-athletics.com/w_100ok.htm

I was just looking at the links above, OP.
There are literally THOUSANDS of men who have been faster than the fastest ever woman.

When even ONE biological male enters a women's event, I wonder what proportion of the time they end up on the podium taking one of only three available medals.

Outside of formula 1 there are women drivers, pretty succesful ones, too.
Especially in America in NASCAR e.g. Danica Patrick and Germany in DTM e.g. Susie Wolff. And at lower levels.
More female drivers and less barriers and I think they'd be level with the men. (Most male drivers never win a race).

OP this article might be relevant:

sportsscientists.com/2017/07/testosterone-performance-intersex-athletes-will-iaaf-evidence-enough/

Also, even if a girl were identified as the fastest driver, there are plenty of other discrimination hurdles along the road that might see her fall by the wayside to allow a male to make it to the top (or at least professional status).

Although Lewis Hamilton didn't have all the privileges that some other drivers have, I doubt he'd had made it to his current position if he were female, even with the same talent. Still too many obstacles.

Motorsports has a pretty physical element to it, but weight plays a good part too.
I don't see why women can't compete equally in it though.

Right now, there may well be disparity between male and female ability at the top of the sport, but that (imo) is more likely a result of years of better training / facilities for the men and sheer weight of numbers participating. If 1000 men drive and only 100 women do, then the chances are that the fastest driver will be male - nothing to do with their sex.

There's a reason why more jockeys are men, its because their bodies are better suited to the sport. They find it easier to keep their weight low without affecting their strength.
Also, mens muscles use and retain oxygen differently to womens.
Its why more men can swim a length of the pool underwater than women, and why more deep sea divers are men.

www.physoc.org/press-release/2015/oxygen-uptake-respiratory-muscles-differs-between-men-and-women-during-exercise

HairyBallTheorem, MaidofStars, et al.--this info is great, would be perfect for fairplayforwomen.com/sport/
which is currently blank.

Sport really helps people see why sex matters rather than "gender identity", especially for persuading men.

Trans Men who take bunches of testosterone can't even achieve the muscle mass of trans women who suppress testosterone and are on estrogen, theres no way a normal woman can compete.

bjsm.bmj.com/content/39/10/695
"It should be noted, however, that even after one year of treatment, the male to female mean muscle area remained significantly greater than that observed in the female to male comparison group. Furthermore, measurements obtained at three years were not appreciably different from those at one year."

Men have larger and more dense bones even in if you match them in height and weight.
Once they’ve gone through puberty they have those dense bones. Hormones don’t reduce that.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/m/pubmed/15746999/

Why do women and men compete separately?

In most sports, it's simply to give something of a level playing field.

It's the same as the separation by age ("masters" competitions in things like football and athletics are for 35+ year olds, as well as the younger Under 11 / Under 13 / Under 15 type competitions). Or disability (all the various categories and sub-categories in the Paralympics). Or weight (judo, boxing etc).

To all the people who snipe "well, why not have different competitions based on height then?", I suspect that if the talent pool was big enough to sustain different height competitions AND the evidence base that it makes a big difference was robust enough, then we might start seeing - in something like rowing - height based classifications. Meanwhile, classifications based on sex and (for younger competitors) age act as a proxy for physical development.

Why not competitions based on race? Apart from the historical connotations of various segregationist regimes, how would a competitor "prove" which classification they should compete in? What would be tested? How many different classifications would we need, taking into account the myriad genetic combinations most of us have? It's patently ridiculous to anyone who has given it even five minutes serious thought, rather than using it as a snippy retort to women who see their chances of ever winning slipping away

I agree that there are a few sports where some women will probably be able to beat men, but the numbers are vanishingly small.

Any schoolgirl soccer/rugby/basketball team will be hugely affected by the presence of boys. I've coached mixed mini-football and seen how the boys don't pass to the girls; the only way to get proper competition is to have girl only teams.

If any boy in a school can now self-declare himself a girl, and compete with and against the girls, and this becomes the "norm", it's going to have a hugely negative affect on girls' participation, even before we get to the fairness of international sport.

Girls' scholarships and sporting events in the US are being affected by this, and other countries seem to be happy to follow. See athletics - his time would have placed him last in the boys' race

Conversely my "boy wins girls event" google brought up this wrestling article - here a girl who is taking testosterone to become a boy is still competing and winning against girls [baffled]

This article might have some stats

www.outsideonline.com/1919331/beating-boys

We are still so new to sport, and our ideas about what strength and power mean are so rooted in maleness I think we really have no idea of what women are capable of

OK, cross post. Thanks.

Unfortunately the ultra long distance sports where (natal) women are more likely to win are incredibly hard to translate for an audience. I love various sports, but I don't want to watch someone slogging across the desert for 18 hours (or whatever)

Why - interesting, any info on that?
I did a quick google on ultra running and all the men's records were better than the women's.

EG www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4495100/#!po=6.70732

RoseSonata I don't think this is about self id or trans issues in general, which explicitly exempts sports anyway. It was a question about why we have male and female sports in the first place and the role of testosterone levels. It came to particular prominence at the 2016 olympics.

No I’m talking about ultra running and swimming, events where the longer the distance the more likely men are to give up before the end and which women are not only better able to complete but to win overall.

WhyDidIEatThat - the type of sports you are talking about, long distance running/cycling, triathlons, ironman (yes the irony of it being IronMAN hasn't escaped me) are the very sports where the women's races are becoming dominated by men, which is very sad.

It's hard to find statistics though, as the wins are recorded as being by "female" names, so it's only when you see photographs that you realise the winners are male.

If you feel strongly about this issue, please consider filling in the Scottish gender self-ID consultation (see link below) - you don’t need to be Scottish. Quote some of the stats in this thread to give your pov more weight.

consult.gov.scot/family-law/review-of-the-gender-recognition-act-2004/

Male and female sports have always existed for fair competition. In saying that, there have been controversial cases like Caster Semenya, thought to have excessively high testosterone for a woman, and some other competitors in her races (mostly black Africans strangely enough). We could then look at cases like the Williams sisters in tennis, much stronger and more muscular than the average athletic woman on the tennis court. Then compare your average men to your 7ft truck lifter that puts it in further perspective. Male and female is just the simplest way to split categories of natural strenght/testosterone and there will never be a happy solution for the discrepencies within.

Wow this is a fascinating thread. Thank you to all who have contributed stats. I've long been concerned about the effects of transwomen coming into womens sports and i suppose a bit of me thought perhaps I was being a bit bigoted.

Please forgive this slightly rambling post as I tell you how I came to realise I am not a bigot!

Im 50, tall, heavy but only a size 14/16 (BMI 31). Not menopausal yet, very healthy and very active - gym/classes/swim at least 10hrs a week - so I should be in a pretty good place, fitness wise. I do several weight type activities as well, not for muscle but for strength.

My DS is 14, short, skinny but with a 6-pack, healthy and just beginning to go through puberty (no hair or voice change yet). Plays sport 3 times a week.
His strength/stamina is AMAZING. He can hold me for ten minutes in an arm wrestle using his non-dominant arm. He can do 50 pull-ups on overhead bars and squat-run over 20m. Which makes me wonder what his body will be capable of by 25, even with no specific training.
How on earth could anyone think it would be fair for him to compete against women??!