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Notes -
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marathon, there is a consistent, persistent difference between men and women of approximately 10-12% (see this slightly outdated chart, the couple records broken since don’t change the story).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.
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.
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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