Why do girls run shorter distances in long distance?

[TurquoiseOwl]

This was the case at my school. There must be a reason, but I'm not sure what it is, so just want to educate myself.

Thank you

Not at my school.

Oh? The boys also had a mini obstacle thing in the middle and had to do the field 5 times, the girls only 3 and no obstacle thing.

Women and men run the same distances in the Olympics.

I suppose if there was only a set amount of time for PE, it might make sense to have girls race a slightly shorter distance as by the time puberty hits girls are, on average, a bit slower than boys and the whole class could complete 4k in the time available but not 5k?

Wasn't the case in my school.

Isn't the case in any of the races I do as an adult or in top level athletics.

Ah, maybe just my school then, which is a bit strange! If you don't mind me asking, when where you at school?

Never heard of this. It was always the same distance in my experience.

Primary in the early 90s and secondary in the late 90s/early 2000s.

At school in the 80s, now a teacher and none of the schools I've worked in do this.

I went to an all girls school, so we only hated PE because it was shit not because it was set up to show we were inferior to boys

Wow, never realised it was just my school. It was a really good school too. I only left 2 years ago! They were still doing it like that then.

If it was the case in some schools, I imagine it's a combination of what Ouch says and that because women/girls are slower, there is only time in a PE lesson for a shorter distance to be covered

Wasn't the case at my school either. I left school in the mid 90s.

When my mum was at school the girls at her school didn't do PE at all, it was only for boys.

As far as i know the event guidelines are issued by British Athletics. They recommend the distances that children should run due to bone growth so maybe it's got something to do with that.

Is your school secondary? My DC's high school has different distances for boys & girls and no one ever volunteers for 1500m so you're not alone.

Yes, it was for secondary

It was certainly the case for the cross country races run between Leeds City Schools, at least at u18 level in the early 90s. No idea what the reasoning was. They used to run the u18 races together and the girls just peeled off a lap early, so I can tell you that at least some of them were faster than me, a middle-of-the-field boy.

It was the case when I was a youngster (many moons ago) and did reasonably serious athletics meets. Eg girls were still doing 300m whilst boys of the same age were doing 400m. Girls couldn't do triple jump (it was only recently introduced as a women's event at professional level)

Women still do the heptathlon rather than the decathlon, and their hurdles are lower and over 100m rather than the men's 110m hurdles which are really high (because of greater height and stride length). It was only in 2008 that the women's steeplechase became an Olympic event, and the hurdles / obstacles are lower than the mens.

Women also use light javelins, shots, hammers etc.

It's almost as if we have different physiology to men, or something...

According to the most recent No Such Thing as a Fish podcast, women's tennis balls at Wimbledon are lighter.
Or rather men's are heavier, because their serves were becoming too fast so they made the balls heavier to slow them down a bit.

Girls don't do 400m due to their heart development being different to boys'. Made a right idiot of myself when I got two girls in my t group to write a letter of complaint to the Head of PE in our school, only to discover it was medically based rather than sexism. To be fair, this was 20 odd years ago - may no longer be the case?

I'm sure at my school we did different distances - I think the boys' longest was 1500m and girls' was 800m. I can't be too sure as I spent more time trying to avoid participation than paying attention to what was actually happening.

I did 1500m at school about a billion years ago. Surely any concern about 'bones developing' or 'heart development' would favour girls doing longer distances earlier in puberty? Don't girls finish growing etc generally at an earlier age than boys? Somebody on here mentioned girls stopped within a year of menses I think.
I would suspect the reason is actually something similar to why the longest Olympic distance is the marathon: because after that, the chances of women beating men become greater as the distance increases.

@Rufus27 - I did 400 meters at school.

It's almost as if we have different physiology to men, or something...

I do get this in some contexts, such as hurdles, but whereas I don't think that women and men should compete together I also wonder if some of the restrictions on girls/women that used to exist or currently exist are more the result of assumptions about women and girls based on stereotypes than they are about real physiological issues. I don't see why women can't run as far as men, for example. In fact, in the 80s, I remember reading as part of my women's studies course a text that debunked a lot of the physiological myths about women. For example, I recall reading about studies that showed that women's endurance in some sports (might have running??) was greater than men's and that women had outperformed men on many tests that they gave prospective astronauts, but that, of course, they were rejected for space travel because although 'man' could send man to the moon he could not find a way for women to wee in zero-gravity.

he could not find a way for women to wee in zero-gravity.

Tell me that's not true!

I haven't Snopsed it, but I did hear that that was the reason!

... sorry, I should have said 'a' reason - not the only one.