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?

in later school settings where a preponderance of boys in some classes might make girls think "well, I can't compete fairly if I'm thrown in to a setting where I'm outnumbered by people with inherent sex-based advantages

Well in my case, by the end of primary I was very glad I was going to a girls' secondary, because there were several boys (and no girls) who were disruptive and attention-seeking, whereas I wanted to learn. I could see patterns of differences between boys and girls, but I certainly didn't think that boys had "inherent sex-based advantages" academically.

Is the difference really that big? I remember doing mixed races in primary up until I went to secondary (at which point we didn't really do atheltics, we did team sports on sports day instead) and it definitely wasn't the boys winning all the races. In fact it was mostly me and one other girl. (I am a rubbish runner these days).

Well, as the only female maths and physics and then subsequently engineering student in my particular class, yes I do have some real-world lived experience of this, thank you very much.

yes that is a pretty poor result tbh (unless you were the only girl in your class) I can see how that would colour your view of the world. Luckily my son and daughters' experience was not like this and neither was mine.

In swimming, girls are faster than boys- up until 11 or so. If you don't believe me, check out gala results- every single registered gala swim times are recorded. I think for age on day for 11 year olds, mixed sex stats, 50 free short course pool- I think only a couple of boys in the top 10 in England in last 12 months.

County qualifying times for girls are faster than for boys too in the younger years. This all changes during puberty.

But back to sports day. I would ask why they made the change to mixed sex races. There are a few practical reasons why they might have changed- but wondering if they are aware of the impact on each sex?

At Primary Age it's actually quite common for girls to be as fast as, or even faster than boys, in my experience anyway.

Nope wrong imo. School do most things mixed but running races are sex based.

All the races were "boys race" and "girls race" at DS1s sports day.
The girls skipping rope race was considerably faster than the boys!

Are you are talking about the translating of physical advantage to sexist stereotypes? And yes, that did happen when you and I went to school. However, you would be wrong to use this as any kind of motivation to deny girls single sex sports events.

If this is what you are saying, it would be you also assuming that teachers of today would allow that sexist discrimination to occur.

We, as a society, should not be advocating that to being more girls into STEM, we need to make girls compete in mixed sex sports. That logic doesn’t even stack up. But I believe that is what you have attempted here. Please do correct me if I am wrong.

And no. I actually don’t agree that a top girl athlete should not compete with other girls but with boys because she will ‘dominate’. You might think it ‘thoughtful’, but if that girl then loses places to those boys, because a teacher prioritises participation over fair competition that acknowledges female talent, maybe you can explain to her why she shouldn’t have expected to be awarded first place in all the events she participated in?

Why should any girl have it reinforced that in competition she should prioritise other people above her or her team? To be nice? That’s the message is it? Niceness to your own detriment?

So you viewed people as people? Don’t most of us do that?

You only need to discriminate by sex when sex matters. As it does in sports from age 6.

“I'd prefer feminist activists concentrate their efforts on designing and promoting sports where bone density or muscle mass doesn't confer an inherent advantage and where children can shine regardless of their sex. And while we're at it, let’s consign combat sports to the dustbin of history, rather than use their existence as proof points why men and women should be segregated.”

Yeah. Life doesn’t revolve around your ideal life style choices but it does revolve around reality. Just because YOU want to ditch all sports that don’t have differences in outcomes due to sex, which leaves very few, doesn’t mean that feminists need to work to your narrow parameters. When instead they can have their single sex sports events and continue to enjoy a wide breadth of physical challenges with fair competition.

Maybe you would like to explain just how YOU would arrange sport that the top sports experts in the world haven’t considered and discarded because it doesn’t work? You obviously have some utopian vision, tell us all.

People are so adamant they must be right, and so intransigent in their views, that they throw out all sorts of accusations with no basis on which to substantiate their point, other than their belief that it will help them 'win' against an unknown online 'adversary'. All very masculine behaviour. Ugh.

I hope that wasn't aimed at me.

It matters to the girls

Yeah. And still not reflecting reality. And not even understanding how tennis rules have been formed.

You know that female bodies cannot sustain the that level of competition to do longer games, don’t you? Or maybe you just don’t know and have used your lack of understanding of the female body’s limits to point out a necessary accommodation. If a female tennis player had to play for the same length of game the wear and tear on their joints, muscles and ligaments would shorten their career.

But hey, don’t let facts stand in the way of your ‘socially constructed’ sports viewpoint. Or maybe you think that the women playing tennis just aren’t playing as hard as the men…

Yes, sporting federations can accommodate ‘participation’ and many do. They have mixed teams. They might to non contact versions such as touch rugby.

Now if you had said, split the female sprint into two heats or into two groups to encourage participation, fine. Easy. Been done for decades. But making a female athlete who ‘might dominate’ run with male athletes who have physical advantage is just fucked up.

What you are doing is having a superior female athlete race with males and she might beat them, but likely she won’t. All because YOU wish sport focused on participation and not rewarding the best female athlete for that age group.

What other sports categories would you like this to happen with? Are you happy for a mediocre adult to also race with the under 12s because ‘participation’? How about an out of condition 20 year old race with the 70 year olds?

You are all about encouraging others into sport. Great. I think everyone should play sport too. What I don’t believe is that girls should be competing against boys because some people think that a talented girl shouldn’t win ‘every’ race she enters and that she should budge aside so all the other girls have a chance. Race with boys who evidence is showing have advantages.

You realise that if you rode an electric bike in the Tour de France and still didn’t win, it wouldn’t be because you didn’t have advantage. It just means you were just not as good even WITH those advantages.

That is what you are advocating for by making an outstanding female race with males.

I always thought it was split into 'girls and boys' just because it is an easy way to sit a class into a smaller group. As pps have said, really not a concern in primary school. With the very young years getting them to run in a straight line towards the finish line is an acheivement.

We don't have to prioritise sex as the be-all and end-all.

We DO sometimes, when it counts. You just cannot accept that it counts from 6 years old.

“But it is not the only way of organising things. Any sporting endeavour has rules that govern participation and admission criteria for competitive events, and which define performance and success criteria. Every single one of those rules is a social construct. Every one. And we can construct the world, and it's rules, in any way we chose.”

I fully understand your ‘social construct’. And you forget that even without a name and rules, which is ALL that is socially constructed, males will still beat female athletes from 6 years old. That is not socially constructed, that is a biological reality, whatever label you use and whatever rules. Discussing ‘social’ constructs here is false and frankly meaningless.

Yes, you can have rules to create further divisions- what part about current sports have you missed that happening on? It is already happening.

Still not a reason to do athletics events that are run to celebrate the best of that category, sex is one, age is another, as ‘mixed sex’ to allow other girls a chance. Run two female division races.

Don’t dismiss outstanding girl’s opportunities just because you, personally, think it doesn’t matter. How bizarre that you are trying to call me out for my approach?

And studies have now shown from
age 6 boys have physical advantages and will generally win.

I'm taken aback by this. I thought primary school sports days were always mixed sex. Certainly any beginnings of puberty are small and shouldn't affect their ability, unless they have a period on the day.

At our school, girls and boys have always won equally, so it's never occurred to anyone it could be an issue. The fastest runner every year is a tiny girl far shorter than the rest of her class and another girl came second in her class this year.

Didn't the government report on research into differences in ability between the sexes in the military come out a year or two ago? I haven't looked, but that would be interesting.

DDs school did an experiment earlier this year, and separated PE lessons into Girls and Boys. And found the girls enjoyed the single sex lessons more. Not because the boys were better than them... but because the boys believed they were better than the girls at sport, and were dismissive of them. In the all girls lessons, the attitude was more positive.

A quick google suggests there aren't differences pre puberty, except girls tending to be taller and stronger for up to a year due to starting puberty earlier; also except for factors due to gender rather than sex. An example below.
http://psychology.iresearchnet.com/health-psychology-research/psychophysiology/sex-differences-and-sport/

Would be interested if there's evidence of physical differences earlier that aren't due to environmental factors (including gender bias in taking up sports, out of school activities, people playing physical games with boy babies but talking to girl babies, etc.).

I didn't even know it was a thing to split the boys and girls in Primary school.

Ours are always mixed, so more or less an equal number of boys and girls in the same team. I haven't heard anyone whining about it yet, and none of the kids is upset at sports day

Pre puberty is a fairly young age group.

And I posted two studies upthread who found that there are differences. One study they referred to was a Greek one from 6 years old and I posted an Australian student also mentioned in the other study I posted that reviewed data from 9 -17 years old.

Who was the author of this article you posted please? I am on my phone and couldn’t see it. I did however check the references, and they seem to rely on one study about physical differences in sport from 1985. That hardly seems to be a robust piece of work and seems largely theoretical.