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Male and female competitiveness - a case study in the running world
Many of the conversations about gender differences in sports emphasize the role of culture in encouraging or discouraging participation in a gender-differentiated fashion. I think running provides an interesting example of the type of approaches that men and women tend to bring to sports in the context of a relatively gender-egalitarian sport. At nearly every running distance from sprints up to marathon, there is a consistent, persistent difference between men and women of approximately 10-12% (see this slightly outdated chart, the couple records broken since don’t change the story). Relative to sports that rely on strength or are highly multi-dimensional, men and women are much, much closer in actual ability, with elite women outperforming competitive hobbyist men in a way that you don’t see elsewhere. Based on personal observation of the sport and understanding of strategy, this is little or no difference in the way men and women approach races at high levels, with the similarities in pacing, drafting, and finishing kick resulting in a similar aesthetic between men’s and women’s races. Also of note, there is no large split in participation between men and women at amateur levels, with local races and clubs being fairly close to 50-50 and often including more women.
Despite these similarities, anyone that participates in local races will notice one very striking difference between men and women - there are a lot more men that are genuinely competing, trying to do their best for a given distance and fitness level than women. For example, one recent local race I competed in was an 8K with roughly five thousand participants; the men’s winner ran a shade under 24 minutes, the top 10 men were under 27 minutes, and 64 men cleared 30 minutes. The top woman was over 30 minutes and finished 76th overall. The 10th place woman came in around 34 minutes. Without being rigorous about the math, we can see at a glance that there are about 7 times as many men hitting a 70% age grade, which is generally a good cut-off for being a competitive hobbyist. From personal observation, this trend repeats itself in most local races, especially when there isn’t any significant prize money on the line (money brings pros, which tightens things up at the top a fair bit).
Prior to any speculation on what’s going on with that sort of disparity, I want to emphasize that among the women that are competitive, I see basically no difference in approach between the men and women. I work out with a few of the local fast women, these were D1 runners in college, and they’re all the same obsessives about running tons of mileage and hammering big workouts that the guys are. In my experience, the women at any given age-grade above approximately 65-70% treat the sport very similarly to the men.
So why are there so many fewer women in that bucket? Some speculative reasons in no particular order:
Physical development is much, much harder for the median woman than the median man. They’ve tried at some point, but they don’t get the immediate physiological response to stimulus that the men get, so they stop caring as much about it. Anecdotally, a powerful female runner friend of mine has told me that she feels like her buildups and improvement are always much slower than men. I think this is physically plausible and that the women who do hit higher age-grades are more anomalous than men.
Women get pregnant. Training hard after pregnancy is more challenging than any inflection point men have. I don’t think this explanation is terribly likely because my observation doesn’t suggest a bit change across age groups, but I haven’t been rigorous and I’m open to correction.
Fewer women have competitive personalities. Women tend to enjoy the social aspect of the sport more and focus more heavily on that, enjoying easy-paced runs with friends, getting into races to do an event with friends, and so on. Men, even social, friendly men, tend to be hypercompetitive about anything they care about, focusing heavily on self-improvement and metrics.
Any of those could be true and I’m sure I could come up with more, but the reason I think this makes good culture-war fodder is the implications for Title IX. Running is more physically gender-egalitarian than other sports, women participate in it at high rates, women’s tactics, strategy, and training is similar to men’s, the culture of the sport is welcoming to all, and yet, there just aren’t very many women that show much interest in competing. If women aren’t interested in running after decades of mandated equal funding for college sports, what hope is there for some actually gender-egalitarian world in sports more broadly? Is the answer from people that think there shouldn’t be observed differences in male and female preferences just that running is still somehow sexist in a way that I just can’t see? I suppose if you take disparate-impact doctrine entirely seriously, what it suggests is that whether I can see it or not, discrimination against women must be happening in the sport somehow.
I know very little about the topic, but isn't there a fourth possibility: that getting a good absolute ranking in the race is what motivates people to try really hard? A woman in the race you described could kill herself training and still not crack the top 50, which might be a disincentive. If this is true, then having separate events for men and women (or, at least, separate rankings) might result in more serious female competitors.
Good addition! I never even considered that, to be honest. I don't think it's particularly likely, because the guys that are relatively high still aren't actually all that high in the running world and can only finish somewhere like 25th because it's not a big deal of a race (and there's no money involved). Someone finishing in that range would expect to finish out of the top thousand at marathon majors and really isn't even competitive with the guys a few rungs higher. But sure, I could see there being some demotivating aspect for women knowing that you have to be very, very good to beat mediocre guys, so you're never going to get the experience of being close to the absolute lead. This would also match up with my anecdotal impression that basically all of the competitive women ran in college - that gave them the opportunity to develop in an environment where they actually were leading.
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Excellent post. If I could offer insight from another sport: Rock Climbing, indoor and outdoor. It's a good example because it is relatively gender neutral compared to eg weightlifting or basketball, and it is a sport primarily practiced by Blue Tribers who are very self consciously feminist etc.
It's a little harder to pin down an exact percentage advantage in climbing, because the points are made up.* But it's accepted common sense that men have a broad advantage over women, the best men in the world climb something like 5.15d while the best women climb something like 5.15b. I'd expect a man to climb 5.10 indoors within a year of serious effort, while I would expect a woman to climb 5.10 eventually, as a general concept. I've known female climbers who hit 5.13 on a regular basis, which is better than I have ever hit and would have been pro-grade male in living memory. But there's a whole grade of professional male climber who are better than any pro female, and there are always a supermajority of men among the best climbers in any gym.
Climbing tends to be a very social sport, and from years spent working and setting and hanging out in climbing gyms I'd attribute a lot of the difference to this, which is similar to @2rafa's point:
Most people seek social status in their hobbies. Women require a lower level of achievement to be accepted into the group, and receive less reward for higher achievement. Men require a higher level of achievement to be accepted into the group, and receive more reward for higher achievement.
In most climbing gyms you can watch cliques form. There might be one, or there might be a dozen, always there are social groups that hang out and climb together. It seemed to me that, to be part of "higher tier" groups of the best climbers in the gym, a male climber had to be crushing V7-5.12, while a female climber had to be climbing 5.10 and didn't really ever need to boulder. To be accepted as an equal in the general climbing social circle, a male climber had to be hitting V4-5.10, while a woman had to hit 5.9 and know how to belay. At that point, once you are in the group, you can hang out and just chill and smoke and belay and climb if that's what you want. Bouldering is 95% hiking and sitting around with your buddies anyway. For a lot of people, acceptance and equality is all they want to achieve. For others, further social goals await.
And while climbers are self consciously feminist, and typically work very hard to treat men and women "the same," I observed over time that while lots of climbers dated**, I never saw a lasting relationship between a male climber and a female climber where the female climber was significantly better than the male climber. Female climbers could date male non-climbers, or even guys who only came into the gym on occasion, but if two regulars dated it only ever worked if the male was the superior climber.***
I suspect similar dynamics occur in other sports, although perhaps not as legibly because grading in climbing has certain specific effects.**** Men need to do more to be acknowledged at all as equals, and the more they do the more respect they get. While women don't need to do as much, and then don't get much reward for getting better.
*Grading is theoretically rigorous, but ultimately empty because it's hard to compare across styles. It would be easy to set a bouldering problem that is an easy V2 for anyone over 5'10" and a hard V5 Dyno for anyone under 5'6". Given that many female climbers also hate dynos because of upper body strength, the grades get all screwy fast. Theoretically there are also climbs that are "scrunchy" which are easier for shorter climbers, and you'll never convince me that crimps aren't better the smaller you are, but for the most part you see that matter much much less than you see reach-y climbs throw off scoring. To keep it simple: 5.6-5.8 is what you expect a modestly athletic person to hit their first day, 5.9 should be doable within a month of learning basic technique, and 5.10 should be achievable within months for most athletic men.
**No group of ForeverAloners has ever frustrated me more than climbing gym regulars who whined they couldn't find a girl. They had everything precisely backward: they wanted to meet a girl at the gym. NO. The girls at the gym aren't impressed by you, they have their pick of chill 420-friendly Bicep-heavy White or Asian dudes on tap. You can climb to get laid, but bring a girl from outside the gym into the gym. She will be fucking impressed that you climb an overhung V3, that you can belay her and coach her up a 5.7, she'll think you're the bees fuckin' knees if she watches you take one lead fall with a buddy.
***Expanding this rule to gyms we all hang out in, like capitalism, is left as an exercise to the reader.
****If you're going to an area where you're climbing 5.10, everyone in the group needs to climb 5.10 at least to get anything out of it. At the same time, it's less exclusionary than running because you can climb different stuff, where no matter how hard I try I can't go for a run with @Walterodim, just won't happen, can't keep up.
There is one trait in which I happened to win the genetic lottery: grip strength. I went to a climbing gym a few years ago and was able to climb V4 my first day; I was 5'6" and 150 pounds then. Probably my grip strength is 90th or 95th percentile.
This might be the one occasion where I say: I hate people like you on sight bro. It took me over a year to consistently hit V4s. Your grip strength must be insane to gut out a V4 with zero technique, or you're very naturally graceful. The only other kid I ever met that good from the start was a guy who was inches from being a pro soccer player, just a tremendous athlete.
I don't remember if it was the first day or the fourth, but I've never been more than a handful of times. I am nowhere near that pro soccer player's level of athleticism. I was just an ordinary 25-year-old dude that worked out a couple times a week. Plenty of guys could run faster, jump higher, and lift more than I could. At the time I could run a mile in a little under seven minutes, bench 195, squat 275, and deadlift 315. Which I considered decent, but nothing to write home about. I will also say that I was about at my limit on these and succeeded only about half the time. I suppose I could go back now, three years older and ten pounds heavier, and see if I've still got it. I could take pictures to show you, if you wanted.
As far as grip strength: yeah, I'll say I won the genetic lottery there. I went to summer camps when I was a preteen where they held dead-hang contests; I always won by a large margin. Even now, with no specific training, I can dead hang from a standard pull-up bar for two minutes. Grace? I'm average, although more flexible than average. Pretty sure that whatever talent I have at climbing comes from just having grip strong like bull. Hands are medium or large, for what it's worth.
That being said, though, swings and roundabouts; I'd trade half my grip strength for a quarter of your social gracefulness, assuming you're not also autistic...when God made me, He must've used a grab bag of random parts off the factory floor or something. I have strong grip, stretchy skin, ADHD, and autism.
You should really give climbing a serious go if your top skills are grip and flexibility, my dude.
We can only trade degrees of 'tism. But I'm jealous of your climbing.
Yeah. Also, IMHO...if those ForeverAlone guys are short - 5'5" or less - they could be climbing V10 consistently, be the best climber in their local gym by a large margin. Unless they're making a million a year or better and have top one-percent charisma? They've got a snowball's chance in Hell of being with a girl who is wealthy and functional enough to afford a climbing gym. Short men, IMHO, are essentially selected by lot to be remarkable human beings, to be nurses, caretakers, and social workers for their partners, or to be celibate for life. The latter seems to be a little bit frowned upon these days...although there's an awful lot of short medical residents who are "focused on their careers". Probably better than living What's Eating Gilbert Grape or winding up with someone who's a danger to herself or others.
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Having been slowly co-opted into climbing over the last few months by some friends, and having spent a decade+ doing Brazilian Jiujitsu (which is similar, though not as gender-balanced but that has been changing) I do get where you're coming from.
At risk of being blunt, what's the lesbian rate of serious climbing women?
About average for prog leaning East coast women? Not particularly gay, but not rare either. Probably much more non practicing bisexuals.
I've climbed with lots of queer women, but I attract gay girls to my circle like flies to shit, so my anecdata may be particularly bad. Sometimes I look at how many bi women I've dated and think I'm the sexual equivalent of the big sign on the highway Last Exit for Heterosexuality.
Fair enough. I feel like BJJ tends to trend incredibly that way, but I suppose the violence aspects make it a bit different.
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I'm not a serious climber, but am I the only one who likes that rock climbing gyms are coed, social, and largely feminist because it's a place where it's considered to be perfectly acceptable to stand directly below and stare at hot women in tight spandex in harnesses while they flex their posterior muscles to climb up walls? They probably assume that I and other watchers are impressed at their climbing, but I'm not particularly, I'm just enjoying their climbing, and I always suspected others did too.
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This should be flipped: women receive more reward for less achievement, unless some hardcore adjusting for baseline level (and/or change in level) male/female achievement is going-on. For a given level of achievement, women tend to receive much more reward socially and financially than men do. Top professional female athletes are celebrities who can earn millions in income, whereas almost all of the thousands of boys and men who can beat them at their sport are nobodies.
smh... not even a feminist space like rock-climbing, of all things, is safe from hypergamy.
If you're a man and your date/girlfriend/wife can defeat you at her domain of [X] (absolutely or sometimes relatively)—where [X] is something she knows you've made an attempt at—you're fairly toast unless you can best her in much greater magnitudes by way of other domains, [Y], [Z], etc.
No, it's correct as is.
Acceptance info the group covers what you're thinking of as reward. Women get accepted into the group, whether it is "serious rock climbers at east suburban gym" or "Gatorade athletes" at a lower level of achievement. But getting WNBA mvp isn't worth that much more than being on the team; where NBA MVP makes you a god. Less reward for the higher level of achievement.
Being a WNBA MVP is indeed a much lower absolute level of achievement than being an NBA MVP. Lower reward for lower level of achievement would be expected ex-ante. As I commented:
>women receive more reward for less achievement, unless some hardcore adjusting for baseline level (and/or change in level) male/female achievement is going-on. For a given level of achievement, women tend to receive much more reward socially and financially than men do. Top professional female athletes are celebrities who can earn millions in income, whereas almost all of the thousands of boys and men who can beat them at their sport are nobodies.
Since we're talking about the WNBA (shudder)—which is kept afloat by the NBA—Brittney Griner wasn't even a WNBA MVP to my knowledge, yet received VIP treatment when it came to international diplomacy. In a similar situation, one of the many multi-thousand American boys or men who are/were better than her at basketball would had been left to rot with little fanfare as complete unknowns, especially if they don't have the black or LGBT cards to play.
Only in the same meaningless and trivial sense that a disabled swimmer in the most severe category winning a paralympic gold is a 'lower level of absolute achievement' than an ordinarily abled person swimming faster than that person in a club meet. Obviously you do have to 'adjust for baseline level'.
Or if you like, a blind man climbing K2 is surely a 'higher level of achievement' than a sighted person doing so slightly faster.
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I think there’s also a disincentive for women (outside of true competition) to push hard. If you go to a standard gym, you find women doing the treadmill, rowing machines, or fairly light dumbbells. They seem to not want to be seen working too hard to get fit.
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I think it's the third option, though we might have to be specific. Men and women are both competitive, but the ways they compete, and with who can vary widely.
I've been involved in amateur sports for a long time, and on something that is very gender-neutral in basic ability (shooting). The numbers are just insanely male. In a major match with a hundred and fifty competitors, you might have five to seven women, most of them the wives of better shooters who clearly put in little to no practice. When you find one with that drive, who is there on her own, has put in the work to get competent, and is really pushing herself....it's a beautiful thing, but notable in its rarity.
Perhaps it's just that women have less need to justify their existence.
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Men are incentivized (whether this is by nature, society, life, the laws of the universe, whatever isn't really important) to find one thing they're very good at and to run with it.
For men, beauty is a floor and status is the ceiling. For women, status is a floor and beauty is the ceiling. A man may benefit from his looks, but wins because of his status. A woman benefits from her status, but wins because of her beauty.
Consider two beautiful underwear models moonlighting as baristas to make ends meet - one man, one woman. Who is more likely to have the opportunity to marry hypergamously? Consider two very successful but ugly corporate lawyers - one man, one woman. Who is more likely to have a more attractive spouse than themselves, the man or the woman?
Women's status is assured, but largely set. Men's is not assured, but usually malleable.
This often causes great consternation to members of both sexes.
It is important though.
If it's by nature, this undercuts the moral force of constant demands for policies that fix this.
Yes, I just want to stop hearing about the WNBA.
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The Hold Steady has a song about this called Guys go for looks, girls go for status.
https://youtube.com/watch?v=3FTS2tdmyYM
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Crab bucket mentality. Women love shitting on other women who have something they don't. Be it fitness, family, a loving husband, career, hobbies, you name it. There is always some frenemy or judgmental family member whispering evil in their ear, trying to poison them against their own happiness.
Unfortunately for women who aspire to greatness, or even just happiness and contentment, their higher agreeableness and neuroticism causes them to cave to their haters more often than they reach escape velocity from the crab bucket.
I've never in all my life seen a man effected the same way. I'm sure everything under the sun is possible. I'm sure some internet rando is going to say it happened to them and they have a penis. But I've never seen it.
There's entire genres of men getting the crabs in a bucket treatment.
Black boys getting criticism for acting white.
The oughts term "metro sexual" to call a straight guy a fag for owning clothing that fit.
Terms for supposedly one dimensional men. Dumb jock. Nerd. Sissy. Autistic. Don't stand out, be well rounded like the rest of us.
It's all over, dude.
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It's pride month. Have you had much experience with men with same sex attraction? There's a cohort amongst this group that love shitting on others, in the sense you mean it.
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I think this might be closer to the key. I'll (partially) be your internet rando with a penis, I'm not especially fit but I exercise and am not overweight and often get shit from my slightly to very overweight male co-workers for not eating or drinking more.
However, I also don't put much weight on what they say about such things so it has never become an issue.
I could definitely see someone who did care what they thought being negatively impacted, to your point.
Edit: FWIW, never had that issue about weight with male peers as a kid and I never encountered crab bucket mentality about academics either, though some of my nerdy male friends who went to worse schools have mentioned getting shit for being in AP classes. They also were not strongly impacted by such statements.
or GATE is more anti-intellectual or just regular nerd bullying.
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I'm not sure how this is supposed to answer the OP's question. Women are less competitive at sports because they're... more competitive? You seem to be portraying them here as competitive, anyway.
I would agree that "higher average agreeableness" would be a possible explanation for being less competitive at sports, but I don't see how this follows from your first point, and in fact it seems to contradict it. Women are more agreeable... and that's why they're always trying to tear each other down?
I mean, if you think words don't mean anything, then I understand your confusion. Let me illustrate with some examples if the difference between nakedly shitting in someone's soul, and actual competitiveness seems too abstract for you.
My wife eats healthy and exercises. Both because it makes her feel good, is good for her mental health, and it helps her auto-immune issues and family history of Crohn's Disease. And every single one of her friends, her mother, her sister et al are constantly making passive aggressive comments about it. Weird shit implying one way or another she's gonna get fat. Or that she's actually hurting herself. Or that she's setting impossible body standards for our daughter. Or that she won't look good if she gets too muscular.
What's the competition? My wife is already married, to me. The women are already married too! These women aren't trying to beat my wife in a race, or anything else for that matter. None of my wife's behaviors have the slightest indirect impact on them, beyond making them feel guilty about their own poor choices. So they whisper poison in her ear.
Now, compare this with Mike Tyson trying to get into his opponents head before they directly clash in the ring. Shit like "I'm going to eat your children" or "I'll fuck you till you love me." Attempting to intimidate a boxer before you fight directly in the ring in a time honored tradition, and how it counts as competitive behavior should be manifestly obvious.
So men are associated with the good version of competition - pure, honorable, based on rules and tradition, with a spiritual purpose. And women are associated with the bad version of competition - spiteful, lawless, poisonous, visited on people who want no part of it. Bit suspicious that it would break down so cleanly like that.
Why make it a gendered thing? Clearly all humans have the capacity to engage in both sorts of activity. Need we point out that men commit the vast majority of acts of rape, murder, and torture? Almost all mass shooters are men - how's that for poison? Granted, a lot of victims of violent crime are asking for it in various ways, but many aren't (I know from firsthand experience). So much for honorable and rule-governed conduct.
If I had to choose between being physically assaulted or being called fat, I'd generally prefer being called fat. If the question is who "shits in people's souls" more, then men do so much more shitting that it's not even a contest.
Men and women are different. Why wouldn't these differences surface in their approaches to competition?
Traditionally competition amongst women is much less direct than competition among men, I suspect oweing to the traditional venus for competition and lessor roles in public life.
Also it's typically only women that care about womens competition, if that.
This is changing quite fast. While obviously women disproportionately care, and men still care about men's sport much more, in Britain at least both women's cricket and football are becoming increasingly mainstream society wide, and with tennis it's been the case for some time.
Possibly in terms of watching competition as entertainment. It's a very small portion of women that participate in women's athletics via organized competition. Nor do the women who participate benefit in the same way that men do, as women's achievements are not valued as much by men as men's achievements by women.
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This is a great example. Evidently I touched a nerve, and thus total war, scorched Earth, is declared. Expand the scope of the argument without limit, and say every mean and hateful thing about the opposition you can passive aggressively throw out, as though it has anything to do with anything.
I appreciate you being so gracious as to provide such a sterling example. Takes a lot of courage to step into that role.
You know I’m a man right?
Anyway I bear no ill will towards you, so if you don’t want to continue the discussion we don’t have to.
I was being charitable and kind and assuming you were just pretended to be retarded as an example. Or are you saying that men can be just as passive aggressive as women can, because you, a certified haver of a penis, are so?
It's evident to me that you knew from your first post in this exchange that you were cruising for a banning, so you decided to go for broke and get your digs in while you could.
Banned for a week.
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It's because men can 'improve' their status within a single-sex groups and women mostly can't.
There is precisely zero way for a woman to status 'compete' with a woman who is much prettier than her. The only way to play is to try to tear her down. I'm not endorsing this necessarily, but it's a reality.
The man is willing to concede that another man is the bigger alpha or whatever because he hopes that one day he can be the alpha of this fiefdom or another. He probably won't, but the hopium keeps things alive.
The best thing a median man can hope for is to be the largest fish in a small pond.
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Cause men tend to be more insane than women.
I can't really find a better word to describe it. It's something I've seen in people whom are really focused on sports, from running to martial arts. The ones whom been invested in such things - for years upon years - tend to be just a little bit, uh, off.
After all, you're basically torturing yourself regularly, week after week, for seemingly no purpose whatsoever other than to, well, keep doing it?
So it seems from the outside. Mind, there's a plethora of benefits that come with said exercise and whatnot, but that doesn't get much focus, as said benefits typically come after those years of practice.
And, yes, your observations tend to run similar to mine. In martial arts, men typically outnumber the women to a vast degree.
- https://philip.greenspun.com/careers/women-in-science
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You get to enjoy it after a while, then eventually you find you can't imagine yourself living without it.
It's (usually) only the first few weeks that a new form of regular exercise feels like torture, then the body gets on board with the program and finishes up the initial adaptation and it gets substantially easier. Then as time goes on, you start to see the benefits, the body continues to adapt to better handle the strain and eventually it becomes part of your identity. If exercises did continue to feel like torture even after hundreds of hours of training, nobody would presist in them.
I would say it has more to do with testosterone than with anything else. It's an incredible chemical, a real life super-soldier serum that we only take for granted because it's "always been this way". Your average man will see greater results faster than your average woman in (almost all) forms of sports, which would certainly help a lot as seeing progress is a real boon to getting invested in any particular form of exercise. The social differences between how men and women value sport are also all certainly downstream from the differences that testosterone impart.
Preaching to the choir, speaking for myself. Mind, it can be easy to fall off the bicycle for some people. There's a wide gulf between people who do this in their early twenties/thirties and the guys who are still doing this well into their twilight years.
Maybe I'm just biased, as I hang out with alot of older guys who are still fit and active.
I'm hesitant to give chemistry all the credit, but that's due to my personal experience. I've gone from 'I hate PE' in high school to 'I need to do this for my own well-being' as I've gotten older. I feel there's a critical mindset there that's more prevalent(or becomes more prevalent) in men(which isn't common to begin with, imo) that's less prevalent in woman.
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From personal observations: a humongous portion of 3, with a greater opportunity cost bringing men down (comparative attractiveness of a runner’s physique between the sexes and the sheer suck of running with extra muscle mass if you also lift).
For comparison, look at high level chess.
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