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there is a consistent, persistent difference between men and women of approximately 10-12% (see this slightly outdated chart, the couple records broken since don’t change the story).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