sports day: Girls not allowed to run 400m

[GotMyGoat]

Do you want to hear something jaw-droppingly outrageous?

School have sent out a message saying that due to health and safety concerns the sports day 400 m will become the 300 m race. Something about it being a sprint, a bit vague but ok. Fine. If you think it helps. Maybe it's connected to the hot weather?

Then, the email says that due to it being a sprint, and therefore posing a risk girls will not be allowed to run the 400m (now 300m) but boys will still be allowed.

What an awful example to set.

If girls run the 300m, do their heads fall off or something? Does anyone have any ideas why sprinting is more dangerous for girls?

I am so angry hat they think they can assume all boys are stronger/ better sprinters than all girls. I was awesome at the 400m at school and would have easily beaten most of the boys.

I'd like to send an email in reply, its going to be too late for this year but perhaps they can change their sexist attitude for next year? Any pointer of how I can sensitively call my employers sexist pigs? Many thanks!

[WoTmania]

That's ridiculous!
allmycats - if it's the case that they can't compete because of ESAA rules then surely the school should have said that? This sounds as if it's a blanket rule across all year groups so not appropriate for all.

[scallopsrgreat]

Well indeed Kim.

I am shocked if there are different rules for boys and girls within the sports governing body.

However the wording doesn't suggest that was even a consideration by the school. They were intending to 'allow' the girls to run 400m and only the weather is stopping them.

[Wonderstuff]

I was outraged recently about a thing at school. House names that were exclusively white European were proposed, I wrote to the head, outlining concerns 'someone responsible for genocide and slave trading will perhaps prove to be controversial?' She thanked me for raising it and has decided to go with place names instead. Your head may thank you for raising concerns before parents do.

[scallopsrgreat]

Well according to the ESAA website there is discrimination between boys and girls:

The Association Junior Championships for boys 13 years and under 15 years will be decided on the total points gained in the following 15 (fifteen) events: 100 metres; 200 metres; 300 metres...

The Association Intermediate Championships for boys 15 years and under 17 years will be decided on the total points gained in the following 18 (eighteen) events: 100 metres; 200 metres; 400 metres...

The Association Senior Championships for boys 17 years and under 19 years will be decided on the total points gained in the following 18 (eighteen) events: 100 metres; 200 metres; 400 metres...

The Association Junior Championships for girls 13 years and under 15 years will be decided on the total points gained in the following 11 (eleven) events: 100 metres; 200 metres

The Association Intermediate Championships for girls 15 and under 17 years will be decided on the total points gained in the following 17 (seventeen) events: 100 metres; 200 metres; 300 metres...

The Association Senior Championships for girls 17 years and under 19 years will be decided on the total points gained in the following 18 (eighteen) events: 100 metres; 200 metres; 400 metres...

Pretty shit really.

[scallopsrgreat]

But as the school doesn't appear to be following those rules anyway I don't think they are relevant in this case.

[NoComet]

YANBU, but then DDs BF would win the 400m and do an extra lap before the slowest boy had finished.

[Snazzyenjoyingsummer]

I would play it differently, and say that if it's dangerous for the girls to run 400m then it must surely also be dangerous for the boys, and that if anything went wrong and a boy became ill as a result, the school would surely be in big trouble for failing to protect them from the risk in the way they have done with the girls. That might worry them enough to pull the boys' race also back to 300m. Sounds like this is a long game and I would aim at cancelling out the planned inequality in this race to start with, then working on rooting out this attitude about girls being fainting delicate flowers.

[TheSkiingGardener]

I think the only possible response is "What the actual fuck do you think you are doing in education if this is the message you give to children"

Preferably stapled to their chest.

[sashh]

I am concerned that we may be at risk of legal action for sex discrimination.

[ChippingInHopHopHop]

I'm with the skiing gardener!!

Have you found them this lacking in other areas?

How long have you been at this school?

Is your Head always this much of a twunt?

At least you have thought about what to do... I'd have fired back an email quicker than you could have said 'Oh do fuck off' and probably been looking at the sits vac over my morning coffee

[zipzap]

I would ask what the h&s concerns are that apply to girls but not boys and ask on what authority are they making these decisions. I'd also be asking for actual evidence of the risk and why it applies to girls but not boys.

I'd be tempted to get in touch with the head and say that it appears someone has hacked into their system And sent out a very dodgy email that she needs to deal with ASAP - say you wonder if it's some non-sporty girls looking to get out of running.

If youare worried about your job are there some senior girls and boys you get on well with or know the parents of and could prime them with these questions and the number of the local paper and get them to start complaining and saying they'll run anyway?

Do you think they are just looking for a way of shortening sports day?

[zipzap]

I would also ask them at exactly which point between 200 and 300m does it become an h&s issue for the girls and what the comparable figure is for the boys to experience that same issue? Say 264m for girls vs 305m for boys (obviously I have just pulled example figures out of the air!)

Because if they can't give the exact point and reasons as to why it becomes dangerous for girls not boys and know what the danger point is for boys, then how do they know that 300m actually is dangerous? There mist be a point at which they decide the danger threshold has been reached - if they can't explain it or provide the evidence then frankly it doesn't sound like they can guarantee the safety of any of their sprint races and should call all of them off. or run all of them, girls and boys.

I would also then use the figures to say well if xxx is dangerous let's run a race for a metre less so at least the girls get their turn and it can highlight the ridiculousness of the situation. They can't argue that a metre less than the distance would also be dangerous as you already know what that threshold is allegedly and are proposing something below that.

If they refuse it will show they aren't bothered about the race for girls and see it as a way of cutting down on sports day, so I'd tell them they need to cut an event from the boys too in order to make it fair.

good luck!

[ccridersuz]

When I was at school I ran the 400m, 800m, 1000m and 1500m.
wasn't keen on the cross country but did it.
I had to write a letter of protest to my sons school because they were sick of football and rounders and wanted to play rugby, which considering we are in Wales was not played.
Rugby was introduced in their final year.
The kids today seem to have a limited choice when it come to sports and I was so annoyed when I had to pay £1 a week so they could use the leisure centre as part of the PE lesson, especially when they were junior members anyway.
So many sports are totally missing from their PE lessons, tennis being just one of a long list.
So much for the Olympic Legacy!!

[allmycats]

Perhaps the OP can actually tell us what age groups she is talking about.
There are also rules relating to the number of events done in a particular period of time pertaining to separate age groups and the amount of 'recovery' time between heats, semis and finals
Weights of throwing implements are all different male/female and age related.
Sprint distances among the younger age groups are different as are hurdle heights for boys and girls as is distance for younger girls who should be going over 600 metres not 800 and 1000m not 1500 depending on gender and age
The main problem here with athletics on school sports days is that the schools are not aware of many of the rules and this does leave them wide open to litigation if their is an incident.
I have lost track (excuse the pun) of the number of school sports days where I have been officiating at the sometimes down right dangerous
actions the schools have proposed. i.e. all hurdles at same height and spacing irrespective of what age/sex were in the race, you see hurdle spacing changes with distance changes not jut the height of the hurdles.
Everyone throwing the same weight discus, shot, javelin. lack of insight into where throwing events should take place and how they should be marked out for safety reasons
Just because we did all these things in the past does not make them right.

[Earnshaw]

With allmycats on this one. Girls and boys develop at different rates; adult men and women run over the same distances, but all juniors work up through shorter distances - the boys are usually one age group up from the girls in tems of race distance (and hurdle height).

Similarly with throwing, though men and women do end up throwing implements of different weights. Is that wrong? My DD can whang a 4k shot a fair way, but did herself quite a lot of damage with a 5k (the equivalent boys' shot) weight which a PE teacher thought she should be training with (club coach not happy).

Girls of DD's age can do a heptathlon (the full women's event); boys do an octathlon and progress up to the decathlon in the next age group.

It's nothing to do with girls not being able to manage a 400m run (or younger boys, under-15 boys also run 300 now), it's about working up to the full long sprint, a notoriously tough event.

The OP's school may be making it up as they go along, or they may be applying ESAA rules, so they may or may not be right, but it's not necessarily dumb sexism.

[flanbase]

How stupid to say girls can't run 400m. Hope that all the girls don't go to the sports event in protest

[GotMyGoat]

Hiya, bit of an update from today - I had a chat with a pe teacher and they explained that the reason for reducing the 300m and the worry for girls particularly is because of reduced lung capacity, and that it makes a lot of people sick

I argued that we couldn't possibly assume that all boys had more lung capacity than all girls, and she agreed that it was an old fashioned, lazy way of incorporating new guidance.

Age group is girls aged 11-16. All girls were excluded. All boys (who qualified) allowed to take part.

[grimbletart]

All girls were excluded.

So they continue to discriminate on the basis that boys who qualified were allowed to take part. Girls were not even allowed to qualify.

Shit logic, shit reasoning.

[CaptChaos]

Has lung capacity in girls dramatically changed for the worse in the last 25 years?

I only ask because we did 400m for sport's days. Well, I didn't because I am a sloth, but the point stands! Were girls allowed to do shot put? We all know that girls aren't as strong as boys, and it might hurt their nails!

What an utter crock!

[scallopsrgreat]

Lung capacity?? Give me a break! A woman's lung capacity is, on average, going to be less than a mans all through their lives. One of the many reasons women are slower at certain sports. Are they going to stop all asthmatic boys as well? Because they would be more likely to have significant reduction in lung capacity possibly more than any of the girls?

Yes boys and girls develop at different rates (girls normally faster than boys so why are they limited to running 400m until they are 17 by the EAAS) but within the groups of girls and boys there are also vast differences, possibly more than between the sexes.

[scallopsrgreat]

What I meant by the fact that women had less lung capacity than men throughout their lives is it doesn't actually stop them doing anything. Even if they are asthmatic.

[GrimmaTheNome]

Girls and boys develop at different rates;
yes... between the ages of 11-16 girls tend to develop faster than boys, don't they? At some point in that age range boys are on average going to be bigger than girls, but at about 13 that's not so much the case.

And from what the OP says the girls who are entering the >200m event will already have been training at 400m.

However ... I just asked DD what races they do at her school (all girls): 100, 200, 300, 800 and 1500m. When she asked why I wanted to know, I told her about this whereat she laughed like a drain and said 'that's how it should be... make the boys suffer'. Make of that what you will!

[GrimmaTheNome]

Is a woman's lung capacity significantly lower in proportion to her size (which is surely what matters)? it might be, I don't know, but the absolute size is pretty irrelevant.