Interesting real life stats on boys/girls sports

Ive not thought about it, I just always assumed boys where naturally physically stronger than girls. The boys in my DCs school tend to be faster than the girls with the exception of my DD who has regularly beaten all the boys in her year group. Although they all play football out of school there are only 2 boys that I’d consider are really athletic and she still beats them. She loves sport but not particularly disciplined in it, she just loves to run and win.

I think school playground tend to be more geared towards one sport too. Any kid not into football gets to stand around on the sidelines and risk having a ball booted at them. Lots of little boys get shunted into playing football early on, so naturally, they are the ones who play. They get better at it, so don't let the other kids play. There are more girls playing football, but I'm not sure they play at lunch time. The boys are still the gatekeepers.

I suspect that school sports are designed to showcase boys' physiological strengths and downplay girls'. Likewise most high profile sporting events and competitions

I really don’t think so. Spectator sports are meant to showcase the fastest, strongest and most agile teams or athletes. It’s nothing personal.

In fact, e-sports could be a venue where women could really thrive in a mixed sex environment—but for the moment most ‘women’ are TW.

Also, I’ve heard that maybe men (particularly East Asian) have better hand-eye coordination? So that’s why they’ve dominated e-sports.

I don’t recognise these anecdotes at all.

www.goodreads.com/book/show/41104077-invisible-women

The barrels thing is just one aspect of the world being designed around adult men, their size, strength and conformation. It's in everything from mobile phones to cars. For women, it's a bit like being left-handed in a right-handed world.

I find boys are a lot more into sport than girls. My 14 son plays football , golf and cricket like his life depends on it. My 19 daughter runs and lifts weights but that's just to keep her looking good in a bikini. My 16 daughter see sports as some sort of medieval torture.

Where women start overhauling men is in the ultra-long endurance events that take place on venues like remote hillsides and in the dark because they take 12+ hours. Less featured in the Olympics.

I've kept coming across references to this in the past few weeks!
Here's a few bits:

Female ultra runners are faster than male ultra runners at distances over 195 miles. The longer the distance the shorter the gender pace gap. In 5Ks men run 17.9% faster than women, at marathon distance the difference is just 11.1%, 100-mile races see the difference shrink to just .25%, and above 195 miles, women are actually 0.6% faster than men
runrepeat.com/state-of-ultra-running
www.5280.com/2020/01/women-are-closing-the-gap-in-ultrarunning/

Are women better ultra-endurance athletes than men?
www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-49284389

I think what is happening to womens sport very clearly shows that people do not appreciate the extent of the physical differences between men and women. Don't forget, it is not just men throwing away womens sport because they don't care. We have elite female athletes opening the door for self identified women (and throwing the next generation of women under the bus). We have female academics solemnly declaring that women are underperforming at sport because they don't try hard enough!

To add- i always find it interesting that liking balls and football is a “boy” thing in the Uk. It demonstrates blue brain, a natural affinity for running around, being active and playing ball games, because boys have better hand eye awareness for co ordination with the ball.

Yet move to the US, and that same sport is now a girls sport. Dads don’t want their boys playing it, because it’s sissy, wet, and a demonstration that their boy is weak and not tough enough for “real” (american) football. Girls “naturally” are better at the non-contact aspect and the technical skill needed....

Perhaps I was particularly naive, but a lot of the narrative surrounding 'girls can do anything' glosses over the physical differences

I never felt it did.

Yes boys/men are physically stronger, no once is saying they are. I did a lot of sport and while I was physically more able than many boys, when it came to the ones that did similar training to me there was no question. Centre of gravity is different, everything is different. Didn’t stop me trying to beat them though!

The whole “girls can do anything” for me was more of an antistereotype message. Girls can play football, nothing is “for boys” or “for girls”. Girls don’t have to like babies and drawing, they can prefer joining in with building cycle jumps and tree climbing if they want. It’s exclusive to stop girls joining in or assume they’re inferior at something purely because they’re girls. Or boys.

Physical differences are something we cannot change. We can change the stereotypes. Unfortunately from being a child in the 70’s where child specialists were actively encouraging dismantling of such gender stereotypes, we’ve now gone the other way where so many people seem to be buying into “innate” pink brain or blue brain as the thing we can’t change.

Even in the first year of secondary school the tallest students will be boys. On average the girls might be taller than some of the boys but by years end that will have changed.
In my own children's primary school final year there were several boys all taller than any of the girls.

I’m bowled over by lung capacity chart. That says it all for me.
I feel really conned by the rhetoric of ‘no difference til puberty’ which has been around in recent years. Thanks for this thread.
Some of you have really interesting stories. I’d love to hear more from those of you who have determinedly forged ahead in physically demanding careers and found out the hard way.

I had an older brother so not clueless. I played football with the boys through my teenage years and saw the physical gap widening. I knew boys were stronger on average, but I suppose didn't grasp how big that gulf was.

I must admit I had never interpreted "girls can do anything " as meaning we were physically as strong! Maybe having a younger brother who was obviously stronger than me had something to do with that!

That's a very good point about the barrel size. However the experience was still eye opening. Up to that point I really believed I could do anything the boys could do, and had forged a career in a male dominated field. I suppose the physical differences need to be acknowledged first, before they can be catered for with design.
Perhaps I was particularly naive, but a lot of the narrative surrounding 'girls can do anything' glosses over the physical differences. The petite female superheroes beating the shite of men twice their size also feeds in to this.

I think something else that came up in the ultra runners was that men are more likely to take risks and therefore more likely to injure themselves early on. Presumably part of that is testosterone linked.

An exceptionally strong woman would have managed, but the fact that an average man is stronger than the vast majority of women is a fact that should not be hidden.
Agreed but that doesn't mean that women shouldn't be able to do that job. The problem is often due to sex bias from the outset. So, instead of saying "what size barrel could the average person shift?" they said "what size barrel could the average man shift?" which led to most women being excluded. This is so common - it even made the news recently when it came to light that Nasa didn't provide enough smaller sizes of spacesuits for its female astronauts. Not all physical differences can be remedied by design- but a lot can if we stop thinking of man as the default human.

Really interesting discussion. Like AvaCallanach, I also had children who's interests followed sex stereotypes despite my efforts for them not to be pigeon holed. It really surprised me how different they were from an early age, but of course acknowledge the societal influences they are exposed to from birth. I do believe it is a mixture of nature and nurture.
I think that while we need to continue to encourage girls to break down barriers, the physical differences need to be acknowledged. I got a real wake up call in my 20s. I took a year off to do some travelling and applied for a job in a warehouse as a forklift driver. I had a licence from a previous job, but I only used it occasionally. When I went for the interview it soon became clear I could never do the job which involved lifting heavy barrels on to a pallet and then moving the pallets with a forklift. While I could drive the forklift I couldn't come close to lifting the barrels, despite being fit and strong (for a woman). An average man could probably have lifted the barrel with ease. An exceptionally strong woman would have managed, but the fact that an average man is stronger than the vast majority of women is a fact that should not be hidden.

Measuring individual boys against individual girls will always throw out anomalies. However, when comparing the best against the best ,then we see the difference between the sexes and by the time they are in secondary school, with the exception of a girl who will turn out to be a national record holder, there will be few, if any ,girls who can outrun, outjump, outthrow or lift heavier weights than her male peers.

PermanentTemporary I would hazard a guess that there are so few women doing ultra running because 80% of us are mothers and have too many responsibilities to be able to devote the time to it. I’d be interested in giving it a go but I’d likely have to wait until I’m in my fifties before trying it.

About the ultrarunners, it's interesting but there was an article recently talking about the numbers - there are so few female ultrarunners that they are exceptional by definition. It IS intriguing though that in truly extreme endurance events women are less disadvantaged physically.

Overall stereotypes are more prevalent to their sexes but we should
Continue to support boys and girls who do not fit into their boxes. But what I now see is that we cannot keep pretending there are no significant physical differences that are obviously going to affect career choices and life choices. I.e. super elite regiments in the military, or becoming a mother. I don’t imagine many women make it through gruelling selection trials, and no XY has ever birthed a child from within themselves.

I will not tell my girls that they can do or be whatever they want if there is going to be physical limitations, or at least prepare them for a serious hard slog to make it in a physically demanding career.

I've read the stuff on the ultra runners. It was used on a running group I'm in to prove that tw should compete with women, as there's no difference. Ffs. Ultra running is nothing like the Olympics. I also thought the endurance thing was interesting too, because aren't women better at enduring pain for longer, but not short, sharp blows? That would fit with our bodies needing to withstand pregnancy and the years of aching that accompany small children and breastfeeding.

It may surprise younger Mumsnetters that many of us now in our late 60s were convinced when younger that women could be physically as capable as men, as well as intellectually. I certainly did and for some years did a typically male and quite dangerous manual job that relied heavily on strength, dexterity and mechanical skills. However I soon realised that my strength and skill was nowhere near that if the men, though I was valued for my work ethic and commitment and never condescended to.
Even despite this, once I had children I was surprised by the very evident differences between my son and my daughter from a very early age, in everyday play and in sport (no sex stereotyping and many of the same sports). Now, they are both tall, strong, fit adults with the same basic body shape - son is 6’4” and daughter is 5’ 11” with corresponding relative strengths, for example, when swimming, DD is technically far better but DS is much faster.