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 "snide assumption"... I am merely posting something you disagree with.

What's your problem? You have a boy and you are miffed he lost against girls or something?

My 'problem' is the snide sides you add into your posts. Such as the 'competitive mum' post and like I 'must love' mixed rugby. Maybe you don't even realise you are doing it.

Plus that my 'problem' must be based on me having a child who missed out or something.

No. How bizarre?

My issue is that for almost as many parents who are declaring 'it is not an issue' there are parents stating 'yes, it is an issue'. And that there is evidence to support the OP for their meeting with the school that will support that athletics should be segregated by sex despite the anecdotes of 'the girls are taler and always win' which may be true for some, but it is not true for all.

It is detrimental to encouraging as many girls into sport as can be encouraged to have athletics 'mixed'. Even if there are one or two girls up there winning as per some of the posts here, there are a whole lot of girls who then are discouraged because a whole slew of boys beat them. And then every sport event is pushed to be mixed sex, so why on earth would any girl even bother?

Whereas if athletics was segregated then more girls will win, because they are winning against other girls and not boys with known physical advantages (and those boys have them even if they are not the winners). More girls will have the confidence then to play other sports.

So, yes, we disagree. However, I am not here slinging snide asides at you.

athletics should be segregated by sex

so do you mean from birth? Segregating by sex from nursery and preschool?
I mean if it's such an issue in PRIMARY school, when the kids start at 4 or 5 years old up to 10-11?

At what age do the school ask them to change clothes separately? I'm guessing 8? That's the age beyond which physical changes manifest - visible and invisible ones. Hence mixed races after this are unfair.

On the contrary. It acknowledges reality.

That female people have biological differences that do need to be considered for situations such as sports. If you choose not to believe the evidence that is now coming through, that is your choice. But you need to acknowledge why you refute it.

And there is a huge difference between acknowledging the reality of a female body verses determining what that girl or women can and can't do with that female body (which is essentialism). Equality in sports is to be given an 'equal' opportunity to play sports or to excel in sports. That perhaps requires an 'equity' approach rather than a strict 'equality' approach.

It is oppressive to believe that with the current evidence that has been produced that girls should compete in a mixed sex event and if they don't win or place that they accept that they are 'just not good enough'. That reinforced sexist stereotypes and is oppression right there.

Probably from six or maybe seven years old until evidence suggests otherwise.

As others have said, at that very young age teachers are still getting them to run in straight lines.

If people have actual peer reviewed data and papers that evidence that there is NO physical advantages for boys over girls, then I am very happy to read them and look through them.

I have posted links upthread, I am keen to see other more recent studies. Please post links.

"Equality in sports is to be given an 'equal' opportunity to play sports or to excel in sports. That perhaps requires an 'equity' approach rather than a strict 'equality' approach."

Sorry, let me clarify, in this instance with sport.

"Equality" = mixed sex races because it finds the 'best person at the time'.
"Equity" = holding races that allow for differences by making categories where people with those differences can race. eg. age categories, sex categories, ability categories etc.

This means that all girls racing will at least be racing against girls of a similar age, with similar development of body, and not have to race with boys who are know understood to have greater aerobic capacity, greater proportion of fast twitch muscles and skeletal leverage differences as well as other physical benefits.

And it means that girls who are 'not the top girl' will get a higher ranking which may be important to them. They are not just '10th' out of 14. That girl who is 10th, might be 3rd girl. If you see what I mean. It makes a difference to some children, and not to others. But why discourage the girls who it does matter to?

If a 'fun' race should be held, great. Have it. But if children are being rewarded in anyway, that makes it competitive. Schools can even have a 'fun race' and a rewarded race. Or they can hold two girl's races or split with heats that include a greater chance of a girl not coming last. There are ways to structure it.

I can't wait to see kids split up by sex, then by height, then by weight, because it's not far if the fat girl has to compete against the athletic one.😂

And yes, that's a thing. In martial arts you go into your age/weight category (and sex category), we should have weight and sex category in school too.

Gosh some parents take sports day VERY seriously.

What we could do to simplify, is only allow selected children to take part in sports day. Only allow the fastest and most likely to win to do the races.

Or have slow runner race, so the slow ones race against each other but have a chance to win something? And the loser is a winer just to make sure no slow girl would ever feel at disadvantage 😂

yes. It is a thing in Martial arts. Because there is a danger issue.

With athletics there is no danger issue and it has been also shown that some 'short' girls will be competitive against 'tall' girls. That is considered acceptable physical advantages. If you chart the average boy's performance against the average girl's performances, you will most likely replicate the results of the two studies I have discussed.

The physical advantages that boys have over girls is far greater than the difference between a girl of a certain height that is fit and is simply shorter than the tallest girl.

You have just resorted to hyperbole to try to make your point and it just makes you look ridiculous. Have you seen one person on this thread advocate for splitting races by height, weight as well as sex? No.

And yet another snide aside.

So what if some children 'take sports day VERY seriously', if there is a reward for winning, it should be based on fairness backed by evidence.

Our primary did a great thing for the sprint type races amongst the younger years where everyone takes part.

Due in the PE practices they grouped them by ability so they had all the "best" in one race then the middle then the seekers in their own groups too.

Made it fairer and fun and still competitive.

I don't know of any research that proves prepubescent children have different physical abilities according to sex, rather than due to social conditoning.

The Greek study linked looks interesting but not comprehensive.

To all those saying it’s only primary school it doesn’t matter, it DOES bloody matter!

We KNOW girls drop out of sports and physical activity at alarming rates as they get older, so it’s damn well important that girls interest and enthusiasm for sport is nurtured and supported when they’re young.

I linked up an Australian study that showed very similar results but from 9 years old.

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

It was at the bottom of the first page, so easy to miss.

This was said about both studies by Developmental Biologist and a Sports Science & Physiologist - see the review of studies they did linked below.

"In early childhood, prior to puberty, sporting participation prioritises team play and the development of fundamental motor and social skills, and is sometimes mixed sex. Athletic performance differences between males and females prior to puberty are often considered inconsequential or relatively small . Nonetheless, pre-puberty performance differences are not unequivocally negligible, and could be mediated, to some extent, by genetic factors and/or activation of the hypothalamic–pituitary–gonadal axis during the neonatal period, sometimes referred to as “minipuberty”. For example, some 6500 genes are differentially expressed between males and females with an estimated 3000 sex-specific differences in skeletal muscle likely to influence composition and function beyond the effects of androgenisation while increased testosterone during minipuberty in males aged 1–6 months may be correlated with higher growth velocity and an “imprinting effect” on BMI and bodyweight . An extensive review of fitness data from over 85,000 Australian children aged 9–17 years old showed that, compared with 9-year-old females, 9-year-old males were faster over short sprints (9.8%) and 1 mile (16.6%), could jump 9.5% further from a standing start (a test of explosive power), could complete 33% more push-ups in 30 s and had 13.8% stronger grip . Male advantage of a similar magnitude was detected in a study of Greek children, where, compared with 6-year-old females, 6-year-old males completed 16.6% more shuttle runs in a given time and could jump 9.7% further from a standing position. In terms of aerobic capacity, 6- to 7-year-old males have been shown to have a higher absolute and relative (to body mass) VO2max than 6- to 7-year-old females . Nonetheless, while some biological sex differences, probably genetic in origin, are measurable and affect performance pre-puberty, we consider the effect of androgenizing puberty more influential on performance, and have focused our analysis on musculoskeletal differences hereafter."

This is the link to the study that looked at the two children's sports studies.

https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s40279-020-01389-3

so indeed, let's stop them from winning the races facing the boys, that's so terrible for their self-esteem.

What do you do about the girls who don't win - against other girls? How do you nurture and support them? "Everyone is winner", how does that work?

"What do you do about the girls who don't win - against other girls? How do you nurture and support them? "Everyone is winner", how does that work?"

I don't believe that anyone has suggested that 'all girls' should expect to win, have they? Although, that is the result of 'it is all a bit of fun' though.

So, it seems to be only polarised solutions are to be considered then?

Either mixed sex 'all a bit of fun then' , or the ultimate break it down into specific categories? All because the average male from aged 6 has been identified as having physical advantages over female children of the same age.

I believe that the norm for racing children in sex segregated races is that you reward the first three (or four) places and other children learn to deal with it. Maybe they ran their personal best and can celebrate that if they wish. I don't believe that any poster has suggested that in a single sex race that 'all children should be rewarded'.

This thread is getting more and more bizarre.

What do you do about the girls who don't win - against other girls? How do you nurture and support them? "Everyone is winner", how does that work?

Don't be silly. It's not about 'everyone's a winner', or even 'self esteem'. It's about fairness - something children understand from a young age and can rightfully get very hacked off by when they see unfairness. Girls aren't stupid (unlike some adults who pretend not to see that there are physical differences between the sexes)

That is very interesting, thank you.

I'd want to see more research including the psychosocial factors (mentioned in the limitations) as the studies here only take into account performance, not prior practice or psychological influences (which can have large effects). I feel there's a danger of reinforcing essentialist views, with the dangers they entail, or exaggerating any existing physical differences, if we don't have research taking psychosocial factors into account.

May I ask what you mean by essentialist views please?

If you do want to incorporate a fair 'everyone has a chance of winning' in primary sports then as well as individual events like sprinting you have mixed sex, mixed ability team events, as I suggested in my first post on this thread. It's what my DDs school did, it let everyone participate enthusiastically, everyone got cheered along by their team mates and their parents. Every inch of the cumulative throw or jump added up, everyone just did their best. And then they cheered on their athletic teammates in the individual events like sprinting. It worked really well - like me, my dd isn't 'athletic' but she enjoyed her school sports days, whether her team won or lost.

Yes. It has been suggested by others too, and me.

Yet, some posters are very keen to take a polarised view of it all.

I'm in two minds about this. Ok, more than two minds. On the one hand, it's not very nice for the girls, it's very discouraging for them. On the other hand, I think there's a reasonably good chance that this will lead to more girls recognizing that when boys and girls are mixed for sport, it leads to girls rarely winning. Maybe it will spark some gender-criticalness in the girls. On the third hand, girls being more pro-social than boys (which here means, more likely to adjust their own thinking so that they can think of the organisers as fair and well-meaning), it's entirely possible the girls would just be driven, by these sorts of experiences, to think of sport as "just a nice thing that's fun and for exercise, and nothing to do with winning or excellence." (Boys, of course, will still see sport as being about winning.) Thus, giving up their ambition in sport, not to mention the chance of winning prize and scholarship money.

Another possibility is that it will just go into the wash because no one except you notices that suddenly almost all the races are being won by boys with the girls relegated to fourth, sixth, eighth, eighteenth place. If the breakdown of winners is never recorded for history, it didn't happen, or at least, it's useless for making any arguments in the public square.

So, document, document, document. Pictures, hatch charts, keep notes, write it down. Keep your data in a folder so you can find it later if need be.

Appalling attitude. Fairness is an important quality to instil in children.

we are talking about primary school children.

Not grown-up men "self-identifying" as women and joining female teams. Did you miss that bit?

YANBU

If they spout some crap about “inclusion “ then point out that it excludes the girls.

There are loads of resources over on the Feminism board and very knowledgeable women to point you towards them.

There’s an interesting research article from Duke University (highly reputable research university in the USA) about the ways in which teenage boys outrun elite women athletes, for example.

BTW, all the PPs advising you that it’s sex not gender are right. And the difference is important for your argument:
sex: biological, immutable
gender: social roles generally based on stereotypes, usually pretty oppressive of women and girls.