Women closing the gap on men
Source: Agencies |
August 4, 2012, Saturday
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Print Edition
Print Edition
THE phenomenal speeds reached by teenage Chinese swimmer Ye Shiwen at the London Olympics raises questions about whether the gap between men and women in sport may one day disappear.
Ye, who has won two gold medals and broken a world record at the Games so far, clocked a time for the last, freestyle lap of her medley swim that rivaled the men's champion.
There's plenty of evidence to show the gender gap exists, and has done so ever since women competed alongside men at international sporting events.
Yet the gap has been narrowing over the years - so will women one day catch the men?
They'll get close, says John Brewer, a professor of sports science at Britain's University of Bedfordshire - but only in some events.
Women first took part in the Olympic Games in Paris in 1900.
Female participation has increased steadily since then, with women around 45 percent of athletes in London, compared with 23 percent in Los Angeles in 1984 and just over 13 percent in Tokyo in 1964.
But women have not always been allowed to compete in all the events that men tackle.
In more "mature" sports where women and men have been running, jumping or swimming alongside each other in international competition for decades, the gap has stabilized, Brewer said. "But where the gap is still narrowing is in female sports that are less mature, like the endurance events - the marathon, the 10,000 meters and long-distance swimming."
Women have only been allowed to run the Olympic marathon since 1984, while the 10,000m women's running race was only introduced in 1988.
In 2010, a study in the Journal of Sports Science and Medicine found that the gap narrowed consistently until about 1983, then stabilized.
The average difference between men and women across all events is around 10 percent, but that ranges from 5.5 percent in the 800m freestyle swim to 18.8 percent in the long jump.
Experts point to important physiological differences between men and women. "Females tend to have more body fat, which makes them more buoyant in the water, and that can sometimes help in terms of speed," said Alexis Colvin, assistant professor of orthopedics at New York's Mount Sinai School of Medicine.
"But on the flip side, women have less muscle mass and power, so the effect is canceled out."
The relative infancy of some disciplines for women and the Olympics means, however, that women could squeeze the gap as coaches, sports scientists and psychologists learn more about how to train, support and push women at elite level.
The science behind training is likely to be skewed toward men, and learning more about how elite women competitors train, improve and compete could help coaches get more out of them.
"Even though biology is responsible for a lot of things, we're also learning a lot more about the most effective ways for women to train and recover," Colvin said. "That might help us overcome some of the biological differences."
Brewer thinks much of that knowledge has already been gained and implemented - something that could account for the rapid narrowing of the gender gap in some events.
"But while a very good female be able to beat a good male, at the highest level the very best females won't be able to beat the very best males," he said.
Ye, who has won two gold medals and broken a world record at the Games so far, clocked a time for the last, freestyle lap of her medley swim that rivaled the men's champion.
There's plenty of evidence to show the gender gap exists, and has done so ever since women competed alongside men at international sporting events.
Yet the gap has been narrowing over the years - so will women one day catch the men?
They'll get close, says John Brewer, a professor of sports science at Britain's University of Bedfordshire - but only in some events.
Women first took part in the Olympic Games in Paris in 1900.
Female participation has increased steadily since then, with women around 45 percent of athletes in London, compared with 23 percent in Los Angeles in 1984 and just over 13 percent in Tokyo in 1964.
But women have not always been allowed to compete in all the events that men tackle.
In more "mature" sports where women and men have been running, jumping or swimming alongside each other in international competition for decades, the gap has stabilized, Brewer said. "But where the gap is still narrowing is in female sports that are less mature, like the endurance events - the marathon, the 10,000 meters and long-distance swimming."
Women have only been allowed to run the Olympic marathon since 1984, while the 10,000m women's running race was only introduced in 1988.
In 2010, a study in the Journal of Sports Science and Medicine found that the gap narrowed consistently until about 1983, then stabilized.
The average difference between men and women across all events is around 10 percent, but that ranges from 5.5 percent in the 800m freestyle swim to 18.8 percent in the long jump.
Experts point to important physiological differences between men and women. "Females tend to have more body fat, which makes them more buoyant in the water, and that can sometimes help in terms of speed," said Alexis Colvin, assistant professor of orthopedics at New York's Mount Sinai School of Medicine.
"But on the flip side, women have less muscle mass and power, so the effect is canceled out."
The relative infancy of some disciplines for women and the Olympics means, however, that women could squeeze the gap as coaches, sports scientists and psychologists learn more about how to train, support and push women at elite level.
The science behind training is likely to be skewed toward men, and learning more about how elite women competitors train, improve and compete could help coaches get more out of them.
"Even though biology is responsible for a lot of things, we're also learning a lot more about the most effective ways for women to train and recover," Colvin said. "That might help us overcome some of the biological differences."
Brewer thinks much of that knowledge has already been gained and implemented - something that could account for the rapid narrowing of the gender gap in some events.
"But while a very good female be able to beat a good male, at the highest level the very best females won't be able to beat the very best males," he said.
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