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Friday, February 22, 2008
This "battle of the sexes" is apparently no contest
American writer Todd Gallagher's recently published book, Andy Roddick Beat Me With A Frying Pan, answers the kind of sports questions that you might talk about over a cold beverage, questions such as "Could a morbidly obese goalie shut out an NHL team?" or "Would sumo wrestlers make good NFL linemen?". Mr. Gallagher and his team of helpers conducted experiments that tried to answer such questions, and he amusingly documents the results in his book.
One of Mr. Gallagher's questions, however, is quite politically incorrect to ask. It does, however, point to some reasons why Canada's national women's hockey team may never play as well as our national men's hockey team, a question that I suspect that even Don Cherry might be afraid to touch.
One of the questions explored in the book is "How big is the gap between male and female athletes?" Mr. Gallagher argues that a top-level male athlete and a top level female athlete are definitely better than the couch-potato of either sex. Certainly there are lots of valid reasons to admire female athletes.
That said, he argues that there is anecdotal and statistical evidence that the gap in performance between male and female athletes may not be due to "sexism". Efforts to allay sexual discrimination in sports may never totally eliminate this difference.
He writes:
"The truth of the matter is that the gap between pro female athletes and their male counterparts is wider than the general public understands and considerably more severe than the sports media has ever presented. Not surprisingly, the gap is largest in sports where size, strength and speed are essential. Somewhat more surprisingly, there's also a significant gap separating men and women in the games that are almost exclusively skill based."
He then goes on to develop his argument for most of the chapter. He then finds an example that may be of particular interest to Shotgun readers.
He notes that the U.S. women's hockey team has played boy's high school teams, in games where checking was not allowed, and lost. He then adds:
"These outcomes aren't aberrations; the women's Canadian national team, which won the Olympic gold medal in 2006, regularly plays and loses to Midget AAA men's teams (sixteen to eighteen year olds)."
I wonder if Canadian sports reporters ever take notice of this. I doubt it. I also doubt that any reporters who may have covered these games asked "Why can't championship-level female hockey players defeat younger male hockey players who should be less skilled than they are?"
I doubt that even Don Cherry is that brave.
Posted by Rick Hiebert on February 22, 2008 | Permalink
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Rick: "I wonder if Canadian sports reporters ever take notice of this. I doubt it."
Really? I would be shocked if they were not all very well aware of this. The recent attempts by Annika Sorenstam to compete on the PGA tour have shown clearly that even in the sports requiring less strength and fitness women do not fare well against men. In sports with objective measures (like track and field with times, heights, and distances) determining winners it is easy to compare men and women and see the women are substantially behind. And when Hayley Wickenheiser, once the best women hockey player, had to go to Finland to play in a lower than elite mens league to become the first woman to play pro hockey with men (other than in publicity stunt exhibitions) it was clear to hockey reporters how big the gap is.
I don't think there is any mystery about whether and how big the skill gap is. It is just considered impolite to mention it. A few years ago when John McEnroe publically said that the top woman tennis player at that time (Steffi Graf?) could not beat any of the top 100 men he found that out.
Posted by: Fact Check | 22-Feb-08 9:05:20 PM
Two more things:
(1) In sports where mixed competitions are not uncommon (tennis doubles and curling, to name two) both male and female comentators routinely talk about the difference in skill between the men and women players
(2) Reporters notice. From Macleans in 2006: "But the bigger part of the plan was the 22 games against the Alberta midget AAA squads -- teams of big, physical teenagers, on track to graduate to major junior, then perhaps pro careers. The experiment didn't start well. In its first five games, Canada went 1-1-3, and was outscored 20 to 7, including a 7-2 pasting by the Red Deer Optimist Rebels. Trailing in the seventh game against Strathmore, on an October afternoon, Davidson let fly during the second intermission. 'I just laid into them,' she says. 'I told them if they were waiting to play Sweden or the U.S. to try and prove something to me, they were going to be long gone by that time.' It was a turning point. The third period was better, and later that week they reeled off consecutive wins. Team Canada ended up with a .500 record against the boys' squads, going 10-10-2."
http://www.macleans.ca/article.jsp?content=20060306_122555_122555
Posted by: Fact Check | 22-Feb-08 9:28:32 PM
If women were equal to men the best women snooker players should be able to compete on a level table against the best men.
If women were equal to men the best women video game players should be able to compete with the same A/V equipment against the best men.
If women were equal to men the best women swimmers, sprinters, marathon runners, skiers, bobsledders, ski jumpers, triathletes, biathletes, relay racers, soccer players etc. should be able to compete with the same equipment on the same competition surface against the best men.
Posted by: Speller | 22-Feb-08 10:09:39 PM
Thank God they are not equal.
Posted by: TM | 23-Feb-08 5:04:32 PM
"That said, he argues that there is anecdotal and statistical evidence that the gap in performance between male and female athletes may not be due to "sexism". "
Unless, of course, one believes the gap in average height is also due to "sexism".
"Efforts to allay sexual discrimination in sports may never totally eliminate this difference."
Unless, of course, one is willing to handicap males in the process.
"And the trees were all kept equal by hatchet, axe, and saw" ... Rush
Vive la difference!
Posted by: h2o273kk9 | 23-Feb-08 5:27:25 PM
A few years back I coached a national champion female boxer. At the time I was very enthusiastic about the emergence of girls in the sport. I have since had a change of heart. After years of trials, female boxing is still little more than a sideshow.
In my opinion, any female sporting event beyond the amateur level is a sideshow. There's nothing wrong with using athletics to build character in young girls in the same way as with young boys. Once it turns into a professional career women should never expect to compete at the same level as men. Not in terms of performance or pay scale.
I don't mean to be sexist, just a realist.
Posted by: dp | 23-Feb-08 7:25:21 PM
The above posts are correct in a General sense, but there are plenty of women who can out think and out fight many men. I can give examples, but I won't.
Posted by: Veteran | 23-Feb-08 8:43:34 PM
I'm not sure why it really matters whether "women" are equal to "men." So much is lost in that generalization (as Veteran alludes to). If some girl happens to be good enough to play on a men's hockey team, let her. Same with basketball and tennis and whatever else.
Posted by: P.M. Jaworski | 23-Feb-08 9:07:48 PM
"I'm not sure why it really matters whether "women" are equal to "men."
It matters because why invest the time, energy and effort to find the exception, in mathematics the military or medicine?
Maclean's;
"Fifty-two per cent of doctors under age 35 are now women. And the majority of students at nearly all of Canada’s 17 medical schools are female. At some, the number is huge—66 per cent at Université de Montreal, and 70 per cent at Université Laval in Quebec City. By 2015, women will make up 40 per cent of the total physician workforce. Peter Coyte, a professor of health economics at the University of Toronto, predicts this influx of women will contribute to a crisis in health care. “It’s going to have a profound impact on the gap between supply and demand,” he cautions. “It will get worse before it gets better.”
It’s been proven repeatedly—female doctors “will not work the same hours or have the same lifespan of contributions to the medical system as males,” says Dr. Brian Day, president of the Canadian Medical Association (CMA). Family duties are at least partly to blame. Day’s own wife and his sister-in-law, both trained physicians, haven’t practised since having kids 10 years ago."
Posted by: DJ | 23-Feb-08 10:59:57 PM
Helena Cronin, "Philosopher, London School of Economics; director and founder Darwin@LSE; author, The Ant and the Peacock":
"What gives rise to the most salient, contested and misunderstood of sex differences… differences that see men persistently walk off with the top positions and prizes, whether influence or income, whether heads of state or CEOs… differences that infuriate feminists, preoccupy policy-makers, galvanize legislators and spawn 'diversity' committees and degrees in gender studies?
I used to think that these patterns of sex differences resulted mainly from average differences between men and women in innate talents, tastes and temperaments. [...]
But I have now changed my mind. Talents, tastes and temperaments play fundamental roles. But they alone don't fully explain the differences. It is a fourth T that most decisively shapes the distinctive structure of male — female differences. That T is Tails — the tails of these statistical distributions. Females are much of a muchness, clustering round the mean. But, among males, the variance — the difference between the most and the least, the best and the worst — can be vast. So males are almost bound to be over-represented both at the bottom and at the top. I think of this as 'more dumbbells but more Nobels'. [...]
Similarly, consider the most intellectually gifted of the USA population, an elite 1%. The difference between their bottom and top quartiles is so wide that it encompasses one-third of the entire ability range in the American population, from IQs above 137 to IQs beyond 200. And who's overwhelmingly in the top quartile? Males. Look, for instance, at the boy:girl ratios among adolescents for scores in mathematical-reasoning tests: scores of at least 500, 2:1; scores of at least 600, 4:1; scores of at least 700, 13.1. [...]
The upshot? When we're dealing with evolved sex differences, we should expect that the further out we go along the right curve, the more we will find men predominating. So there we are: whether or not there are more male dumbbells, there will certainly be — both figuratively and actually — more male Nobels."
"..as Darwin noted, greater male variance is ubiquitous across the entire animal kingdom."
Posted by: DJ | 23-Feb-08 11:05:48 PM
Equality is being confused with sameness. Men and women may and should be equal, but they can never be made to be the same - interchangeable. No matter how hard some want to deny their differences, they will never succeed. Furthermore there is nothing wrong in being different, as this does not equate to one being better than the other as a person.
Posted by: Alain | 23-Feb-08 11:31:29 PM
DJ,
"It is a fourth T that most decisively shapes the distinctive structure of male — female differences. That T is Tails — the tails of these statistical distributions. "
I wonder what Ms. Cronin thought of l'affaire Summers.
Posted by: h2o273kk9 | 24-Feb-08 5:50:35 AM
Recently it was announced that prizes for the women's side at large tennis tournaments would equal that of the men's side. Yet women still only play three sets. Males have to play five. Equal? No.
There was a great discussion in Toronto here a decade or so back that women racers weren't getting the same prizes as men. Of course the politically correct viewpoint won (this is Toronto of course).
If there is true equality, then just give prizes to the first 10 across the finish line, gender be damned. THAT would be equality. But it isn't what they want, is it?
Posted by: James Goneaux | 25-Feb-08 9:03:58 AM
James,
Who should get bigger prizes: Tennis players or golfers? Well, one could try to answer the question based on how hard each sport is to be good at and how much time players of each puts into it, but that would be to focus on irrelevant factors. The bottom line is that players in both sports are not objectively worth anything. Their value resides solely in what the market dictates. That essentially boils down to what people will pay to see them play.
When men and women play separate events (like all major golf tournaments and most tennis tournaments) it is easy to determine what the worth of the players is. But when the event is a combined one, like the Grand Slam events in tennis, it is harder. Ticket sales don't differentiate, and they are all always sold out anyway. TV rights are bought as a package, and TV coverage includes both men's and women's matches. So whether there is a valid basis to say men should be paid more than women for the Grand Slam events is highly questionable. But, if the mere fact of differential prizes makes the event less popular with its audience, then these events have a legitimate market reason to offer the same prizes.
An unseeded player you've never heard of does not get a smaller prize for winning Wimbledon than Roger Federer does because the former is less of a draw. Men who win the final in three easy sets don't make less than those who win in five long ones. Losers don't make the same as winners even though they played the same length of time. Setting prizes is not based on length of play at all or on the individual popularity of the particular winners. If the women's finals had to sell tickets for lower prices or if TV broadcasters insisted on paying less for the women's final than the men's, then there would be a case for different prizes. But as it stands, there is no good argument for the difference. Certainly not your weak 3 sets vs 5 sets argument, anyway.
Posted by: Fact Check | 25-Feb-08 9:54:19 AM
Just wanted to mentione the highest recorded IQ ever (and in guiness if that means anything)
Marilyn vos Savant
The leadership demographics of mensa: — both national and local officers — is 50 percent male, 50 percent female. Although general membership is 65 percent male, 35 percent female.
Is it possible that women just aren't getting IQ tested? Or maybe their membership into this club doesn't mean as much as would to a man?
Physically, I couldn't agree more. Women shouldn't even WANT to compete (unless for fun)in athletics, weight lifting etc. But on the brain scale... THAT is a completely different argument.
Posted by: Dawn | 25-Feb-08 11:18:41 AM
H20,
The vital statistics
Evolution, not sexism, puts us at a disadvantage in the sciences
* Helena Cronin
* The Guardian,
* Saturday March 12 2005
"I often feel as if I'm in a Bateman cartoon: "The Feminist Who Said She Was a Darwinian". Gasps of horror and disbelief. After all, it's well known that Darwinism spells reductionism, essentialism and genetic determinism (whatever they mean) and is an agent of the male conspiracy to chain women to kitchen sinks.
This caricature has been much on my mind since the president of Harvard, Larry Summers, dared to get biological about women in the natural sciences, engineering and maths. Talking at a closed conference about why so few women occupy top academic jobs in these disciplines, he attempted to probe beyond such familiar issues as childcare, role models, confidence (lack of) and prejudice (lots of). Summers made the modest claim that evolved sex differences, though not the sole reason for this male predominance, are among the reasons that should be considered. Outrage ensued. Not least, would-be feminists got the vapours, exacted apologies, mooted no-confidence motions, demanded resignation, and told the world of their hurt and humiliation.
But, as evolutionary science shows, Summers was right - for three reasons.
First, men, on average, have an advantage in certain quantitative and spatial abilities - particularly intuitive mechanics and "3-D thinking" (mental rotation of three-dimensional objects) - that are key for engineering and maths.
Second, there are, on average, sex differences in dispositions, interests, values. Men are far more competitive, ambitious, status-conscious and single-minded; and they'd rather work with abstract ideas or objects than with humans. Women are more focused on family and other relationships; they have wider interests and prefer not to work in people-free zones. When women leave high-powered jobs to "spend more time with the family", it's truth, not euphemism. In the US, even in the top 1% of mathematical ability, only one woman to eight men makes a career in maths, engineering or science; the other seven choose medicine, biology, law or even the humanities - typically, to work with, and help, people.
Third, sex differences exhibit greater male than female variance. Females are much of a muchness, clustering round the mean. But among males, the difference between the most and the least, the best and the worst, can be vast. So, when it comes to science, more men than women will be dunces but more will be geniuses - although the means are close. The maths averages of American teenage boys and girls are not dramatically different; but among the most mathematically gifted there are 13 boys for every girl. Sex differences are crucially about variance as well as means.
Now combine these three factors. Isn't it unlikely that the distribution of men and women working in science will be identical? And the higher the echelon, the greater will be the preponderance of men - with obvious outcomes for elite institutions such as Harvard.
These differences are not recent or artificial or arbitrary. They have deep evolutionary reasons, which are well understood. Sexual reproduction as we know it began with one sex specialising slightly more in competing for mates and the other slightly more in caring for offspring. This divergence became self-reinforcing, widening over evolutionary time, with natural selection proliferating and amplifying variations on the differences, down the generations, in every sexually reproducing species that has ever existed. Thus, from this slight but fundamental initial asymmetry, flow all the characteristic differences between males and females throughout the living world. Now, 800 million years later, in our species as in all others, these differences pervade what constitutes being male or female, from brains to bodies to behaviour."
Posted by: DJ | 25-Feb-08 11:26:17 AM
Well, Fact Check, you made one good point, then got bogged down in irrelevancy.
Your good point is that, yes, the market place sets what athletes are worth. I've always told teachers complaining about their pay vis a vis athletes that if they could get 20,000 to pay $50 a ticket to watch them teach, they'd have a point.
My point was that discussions like this tend to dial down to "equal pay for equal work". And female athletes don't perform equal work, but they (or uninformed advocates) demand equal pay. Hence, they drive from tees closer to the pin in golf, and play only three sets in tennis.
As I said, whoever pays the tickets calls the shots (or, in too many cases, pays the TV rights, regardless of what they know about anything). I have no problem with that.
But it isn't "equal" at all.
If Michelle Wie looked like Margaret Cho, do you think she'd be invited to play in men's tournaments? If Danica Patrick looked like AJ Foyt, would she be in a bikini in SI?
Posted by: James Goneaux | 25-Feb-08 5:07:34 PM
DJ,
Thanks. Excellent read.
Dawn
"But on the brain scale... THAT is a completely different argument."
A larger standard deviation but approximately similar mean says you may only be partially correct...and you get increasingly more wrong the higher the IQ scores get away from that mean.
Posted by: h2o273kk9 | 25-Feb-08 5:26:08 PM
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