Mixed gender race at sports day

[littlegreydevil]

Hi, long time lurker but first post and I’m aware I am stepping in with a particularly hot topic but here goes…
Our primary school organised its annual sports day this week and for unknown reasons, decided to mix boys and girls for the sprints. Teams are usually mixed genders for the less competitive activities like the sack race, egg and spoon race, etc. but this is the first time they’ve mixed genders for the competitive races. Of course this has resulted in only 2 girls making the podium across all the year groups and both “only” hitting third place.
I’m really bothered by this as I thought sports day was about celebrating sporting achievements and encouraging kids to enjoy sports (I know this can be disputed but that’s a whole other debate) and today, I have watched a ream of very sporty, very talented female runners lose to their male counterparts and I can’t see how that fits in the ethos of sports day.
I am planning to speak to the head to question their motives in making this odd decision.
imo sport is gendered for a reason and it should be about equity rather than equality. You might be able to argue that younger age groups could be mixed as supposedly their physical ability is the same up to age 7 or 8 (need to find the references for this) but from year 2 onwards, it doesn’t work anymore. Girls start going through puberty from as young as 9 so by that point, it should be gendered.
For full transparency, I have 2 children, a boy and a girl, neither of which is talented in athletics (they are very good in other sports) and usually come in at a solid bottom 3rd place so this is not about my kids being slighted.
If you were me, what questions would you ask from the head and, seeing as they have a track record of being quite obstinate, what arguments would you produce?

What a pile of shite. It might be more inclusive to someone but it's not inclusive to any of the girls.

Sex not Gender

When DD was at primary they were often mixed races, puberty hadn’t kicked on, so the physical differences weren’t that big. DD was 5’ 4” in Y6, taller than all the boys.

Haven't primary school sports day always been mixed genders? They were in my day, in my parents day and my son's school now do the same thing.

Possibly they didn't want to have to run a "non-binary" race as well. If that's the problem, perhaps the solution is to have mixed races, but awards for fastest two boys and fastest two girls.

Always been mix of boys and girls at ours

I believe if you look at percentile charts, boys are a bit bigger from very early on (toddlerhood, if not before).

Really not an issue when it's a primary school.

Tricky one. I'm not sure there is clear evidence that there are sex based differences pre-puberty.

However I suggest that you be clear about your language (sorry if you know all this). Sex is biological. Defined by your chromosomes and dictates circulating hormone levels etc.

Gender is an identity.

In this case I think you want sports categories to be sports based.

The following may be helpful.

https://law.duke.edu/sports/sex-sport/comparative-athletic-performance/

Disagree. Didn’t you read the OP?

And it’s sex, not gender. I’d point this out to the Head.

Of course it’s an issue at primary school!

I believe sex differences show from about as early as 7 or 8 years old.

My DD has moved on to secondary school but I very clearly remember Yr 6 and Yr 5 sports days. The boys were already much faster and more powerful, eg in the throwing ones.
The sprinting races were always split by sex and rightly so.

At 8 years old races and throwing events should be split by sex.

It's always been mixed where my DC are. Never experienced any issues. It's all just good fun. I appreciate that some schools are a lot more competitive though and I imagine that in larger schools the sex difference may be more apparent- especially if they are paraded on a podium.

The happy medium for this is to have the sports day between mixed sex houses or teams, with some mixed sex team sports (cumulative jumps or throws - first child throws a beanbag. Second child picks it up and throws it on etc.). Fully inclusive of both sexes and most abilities. In ks1 all the events can be of this sort.

Then single sex sprints or whatever for those who want to participate in ks2.

It has been noted that even at 6 years old male athletes have physical advantages over female athletes.

I will try to find the links to the studies- there is a Greek study and an Australian school
children study that show this.

Why would a school do this to girls where they are then not encouraged to do the best they can?

Some parents might think ‘it is just a bit of fun’ but I remember as a child that feeling of the boys beating most of us girls, it was not fucking fun going from 2nd or 3rd fastest girl to come in 8th or 10th. It was the opposite of motivational even at 8 years old!

It is not just a bit of fun to have mixed sex sprint races.

Tell that to the girls who always end up losing out to the boys!
Why should girls have to compete with boys? In all sports days Ive been involved in, from Y1 onwards the races have been separated by sex. That is the only way it is fair.
Girls deserve better!

Same here. And the girls won all the races this year.

My DC's sports day was mixed sex at junior school level but it was all team based - they did various activities to earn points for their team, so there was no direct comparison of any two individuals.

It's bloody school not the olympics 🤷‍♀️
I just couldn't imagine finding the energy to moan about sports day 😂

Our school always had separate boys and girls competing once in the juniors.
So all Yr 3 girls competed against each other, all Year 6 boys etc.

But it was a large school so made organising easy. Might not work well at small schools where you only have a few of each sex per year and it's not even.

I do think by upper juniors they should separate them though

Always had separate girls and boys races at my primary school.
Definitely puts girls at a disadvantage.
You could start by asking what the rationale is for changing things as that might give you an insight into the thinking, it could just be a logistical issue (e.g. not enough girls in a particular year or something), also maybe ask other parents at school what they think.

Yes but if girls are discouraged from playing sport because they can see their disadvantage, and they are not given an opportunity to compete fairly, this is not a good outcome, which for some people may end up in a life long aversion to exercise.

It’s sex, not gender. And I think for primary school mixed is fine. I wouldn’t even think otherwise

Races were mixed in my primary school in the 80s/90s and I came first in the sprints several times.

Here is the Australian study.

citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/document?repid=rep1&type=pdf&doi=021cccdaed57d120bb05bac71c05ee82b0c5b315

P6. Starts discussing that boys consistently scores higher, were faster etc. even at 9 years old.