Intergender Sports

[Benji]

Simple question - should sports become more intergendered? Are we at a time in society where sport shouldn't be about who's the best of a certain gender, and instead should be about who is the best, period?

[Rich]

Lingerie football mixed with NFL? Could be interesting....

[Benji]

Tim Tebow in frilly lace? I'm down with that.

[Dan]

Boxing and MMA would be amusing.

[Quom]

It seems plain to me, sports are gendered because of physical differences. I mean you could make it gender neutral if you want but women would never crack the top 50 in most sports. If you want sports to be even more male dominated then knock your pipe out.

[Baddar]

I see no reason why golf or tennis couldn't be. If you're good enough, why not. Same goes for anything that's non contact really. The men will naturally be more powerful, but if a woman is good enough to compete, I don't see why not.

I always thought that if a female footballer was good enough, they could join mens leagues, but I guess that would completely destroy the women's game.

[Quom]

A guy ranked 203rd beat the Williams sisters in 1998.

[Rich]

They let the first woman and the numerous time world champion in to the World Snooker Championships qualification this year, she didn't qualify.

[MDK]

*tries hard not to be sexist*

[Benji]

To play devil's advocate - they may not be as good right now, but to the counter of that - do they have the same level of coaching as their male counterparts, or is the focus skewed because of money?

Many female sports personalities aren't paid even close to their male counterparts because of a lack of interest. For example, the England womens football captain earns in a year what John Terry is paid in a day, and that is after she also works two part time jobs. Players in League 2 earn more than her in a year playing full time. I'm sure many female athletes would appreciate and deserve the financial benefits of being a member of the main footballing leagues.

According to a BBC article from just six months ago, men get more prize money than women in 30% of sports, and that's just prize money, not general wages or sponsorships. Heck, this graph from the same article shows the sheer amount of disparity.

Are the financial benefits of being a middle ground sportsperson worth the potential drop from being the big fish in the smaller pond?

[badotori]

A guy ranked 203rd beat the Williams sisters in 1998.

There's mitigating factors in this case - Venus and Serena were in their late teens though, still developing both technically and physically. Plus, the guy was a previous top 50 player.

Ranking isn't always indicative of ability. Kyrgios was ranked 144th in the world when he beat Nadal at Wimbledon and he was definitely the better player that day.

[Baddar]

A guy ranked 203rd beat the Williams sisters in 1998.

So they weren't good enough or strong enough to compete then. Like I say, if you are, then why not. There's no woman THAT much stronger than them in tennis to my knowledge, so intergender tennis wouldn't be as competitive as golf could be. Men are obviously better when it comes to distance and would have an advantage, but distance isn't everything. If a woman felt she could mix it up on the PGA tour, why not.

[Whisper]

I don't think that it's really possible in most cases. The physical differences would be a massive hurdle. I am however, all for it in instances where it would be possible

What I would like, is for us to stop calling them "women's" sports. Tennis is fine, because we call it "Men's tour, women's tour" etc. But it irks me that we call it "Women's Football". It should just be football, unless we want to start calling it "Men's football" too.

I don't really know why it bothers me so much. I just think that prefacing it with "women's" automatically infers a lesser importance, when we don't do the same for the men's game.

[Benji]

Your votes are anonymous by the way, so if you want to vote but are worried about possible responses, don't worry about it.

[badotori]

I don't think that it's really possible in most cases. The physical differences would be a massive hurdle. I am however, all for it in instances where it would be possible

What I would like, is for us to stop calling them "women's" sports. Tennis is fine, because we call it "Men's tour, women's tour" etc. But it irks me that we call it "Women's Football". It should just be football, unless we want to start calling it "Men's football" too.

I don't really know why it bothers me so much. I just think that prefacing it with "women's" automatically infers a lesser importance, when we don't do the same for the men's game.

I agree that women's football shouldn't be prefaced on a club level but Olympic sports like athletics and swimming where the men and women often compete on the same day need that distinction, i.e. women's 100m, men's 400m medley.

[Rich]

To play devil's advocate - they may not be as good right now, but to the counter of that - do they have the same level of coaching as their male counterparts, or is the focus skewed because of money?

Many female sports personalities aren't paid even close to their male counterparts because of a lack of interest. For example, the England womens football captain earns in a year what John Terry is paid in a day, and that is after she also works two part time jobs. Players in League 2 earn more than her in a year playing full time. I'm sure many female athletes would appreciate and deserve the financial benefits of being a member of the main footballing leagues.

According to a BBC article from just six months ago, men get more prize money than women in 30% of sports, and that's just prize money, not general wages or sponsorships. Heck, this graph from the same article shows the sheer amount of disparity.

Are the financial benefits of being a middle ground sportsperson worth the potential drop from being the big fish in the smaller pond?

I think the other thing is (and it may be a bit of a circular argument. That's Men's sport tends to be more impressive to watch as they tend to be better and more physically impressive.

I think things will change over the coming years, but I think we won't see much intergender competition, more likely Women's sports will become more well supported in terms of fans and financially.

[Whisper]

I don't think that it's really possible in most cases. The physical differences would be a massive hurdle. I am however, all for it in instances where it would be possible

What I would like, is for us to stop calling them "women's" sports. Tennis is fine, because we call it "Men's tour, women's tour" etc. But it irks me that we call it "Women's Football". It should just be football, unless we want to start calling it "Men's football" too.

I don't really know why it bothers me so much. I just think that prefacing it with "women's" automatically infers a lesser importance, when we don't do the same for the men's game.

I agree that women's football shouldn't be prefaced on a club level but Olympic sports like athletics and swimming where the men and women often compete on the same day need that distinction, i.e. women's 100m, men's 400m medley.

Absolutely, I agree. Because we already differentiate those by using "men's" and "women's".

It's probably not even a big deal to most people, just a phrase like "Women's World Cup" makes me cringe, when no one has ever said "Men's World Cup".

[Gazz]

I'd imagine the differences would have something to do with gender norms.

Take football as an example, every professional footballer you would talk to will tell you that they've been kicking a ball since they could walk and it's not an exaggeration. Pretty much every young boy will get access to a football before their 4th birthday, it's what you do because all boys like football (generalisation). Girls who want to play football is generally a concious decision on the part of the girl, which more than likely won't happen till their 6/7/8 years old. By that time, they've already missed out on several years of fundamental footballing ability development, so they're always playing catchup and once puberty hits and the physiological differences (muscle mass, fast twitch muscle mass, height, weight) come into play, it's a completely different level. Then they wouldn't even be considered for professional coaching, which will make the gap even larger as time passes. Plus, since football is a male gender norm, the male potential participant pool is massive in comparison to the female pool. More players, more chance of one of them reaching elite status.

It's the same for all sports, no one gets to an elite level unless they start a regime of purposeful practice from an extremely young age and what you practice is more than likely biased towards what gender you are.

[TEOL]

Remember kids, there's only one sport where the playing field is equal.

[Rich]

I hate you so much TEOL