[[I’ve heard that women’s spatial perception is not as good as men’s.]]
There is tremendous variation among individuals here. And spatial perception can be learned. You can generalize about body strength and speed (though I’m guessing I could probably outrun the majority of males who post on the this board - at least in a distance race - and maybe do more push-ups than many of them, too) but I don’t think generalizations like gender difference in spatial perception hold much water. - Jill
Chess is being considered as an Olympic event (probably in the Winter Olympics). There was a demonstration match between Grandmasters (Shirov and Anand, if I remember correctly).
Whether chess is a sport has been discussed in other threads. (Personally I’m convinced: it’s played all over the world, is completely skilful, highly competitive and requires no artistic judgement to see who won. Incidentally I would also scrap ‘walking’ and ‘solo synchronised swimming’ as sports).
There has been a Women’s World Champion for 50 years, plus a Junior World Champion more recently. However juniors and women can compete in the World Championship. (Unfortunately there are two claimants for the world title at present, due to shenanigans about a decade ago.)
Anyone can be a Grandmaster - Judith Polgar is. Only women can be Women Grandmasters; the qualifying standard is set at about the same as a Master.
As previous posters have noted, it’s difficult to judge whether women are as ‘talented’ as men, because far more men than women play chess.
Several posters to this thread have made the assumption that men and women could be presumed to be equal at a sport which did not involve strength. Assuming apparently that men and women are, on average, equal in reflexes, coordination, and other factors that are crucial to sports success.
Is there any basis for this assumption?
In reference to short game golf, what about Putt-Putt competitions? Does anyone care to look up stats on that?
Men probably win out in rock climbing in the end. If two novices, one male, one female, start learning the ropes at the same time, the female often initially does better - because she isn’t as strong! Men tend to try to power their way up routes using their arms. Women already know this isn’t going to get them very far (or figure it out in the first few minutes,) so they concentrate on foot placement and general finesse, thus learning core skills more quickly. Over time, the guy will learn the error of his ways, pick up the skills, and then have a superior strength to give him an edge. However, men generally weigh more, so they have to be stronger anyway just to handle their own weight. I don’t follow the competitions, though. I’m betting that strength gives men the edge.
Solo synchronized swimming, glee? Am I missing something? Doesn’t it take two to synchronize?
I didn’t find any cites that asserted it was true, in an admittedly quick search. My point was only that it should not be dismissed out of hand, as previous posters had.
I never knew that archery participants actually timed their release in between heartbeats.
Anyway, I don’t know enough about either archery or cardiology to provide an expert opinion.
Qadgop, you have a background in cardiology, so I’d be interested to know the following before we put this one to bed:
Is there a difference in the resting heart rate between men and women? You said you’ve done stress tests and noticed no difference, but what about the resting rate?
I’m assuming archers release between heartbeats in order to be as still as possible. Are there any differences between the heart of a man and a woman which would affect this movement? Do men have larger hearts? Is there a difference in the amount of blood pumped?
While I am not a professional with a bow or gun, I don’t pay attention to my heartbeat. I shoot after I exhale and before I inhale. Unless I’m really pumped up, I can’t feel my heartbeat most of the time. If I’m that worked up that I can hear / feel my heartbeat, I’ll probably not hit what I’m aiming at.
Platform Diving? I think not… don’t think that just because you remove the diving board that the men aren’t jumping higher and flipping faster. With a few exceptions in the world, a woman is not competing the same list of dives as the average man in the US.
USCDiver
zuma on the average, women are smaller, so on the average, their hearts are smaller, and pump less blood. Therefore their average oxygen consumption is less. These are averages. A 5’10" 170 lb woman’s heart will be larger and pump more blood than a 5’4" 130 lb man. No rate differences.
Definetly not rock climbing. Granted, a lot of it is based on relative strength…but the extremely hard routes all require hand strength above and beyond what women can generally develop. Men being generally taller also gives them an edge for the most part.
Most definitely NOT. There has rarely been a woman who could be competitive with the men in this sport. Dorothy Wise, Ruth McGinnis when billiards was considered a gentlemen’s sport. In the past, when Jean Balukas was the dominant female player, she competed in men’s events and never won though she did have some impressive wins. The 2 top females in the WPBA tour, Allison Fisher and Karen Corr would not regularly place in the top 20 of a male domincated event. Karen Corr has played in several Viking tour events against a predominantly male field. She places well but these players are generally not considered at the same level as top 40 male pros.
Allison and Karen come from a snooker background and though they were champions in their field, they would not be considered competitive among the top 100 male pros.
A couple years back, Allison did an exhibition tour against Grady Mathews. They played sets of 9-ball in several cities and she did not even break when it all ended up. Grady, while a good player, is not in the top 20. At the time, Allison was the #1 female player.
One would think that women would be more competitive with men in this field since strength plays a minimal role but it just doesn’t happen in reality. This problem is often debated in rec.sport.billiard .
Obigatory disclaimer: I don’t have anything against women. I would like to see them be more competitive because they bring more class and interest to pool than the men and the men have no tour worth speaking about since apparently, they cannot get along with any potential sponsers. Argh.
Bowling ,and bowls seen that on some cheesy TV show where a man came up to the alley and scored a strike woman did the same and repeated like that all night and i fell asleep
Sorry JillGat, women are not even close in the ultra running distances. There has been a lot of misinformation in that area. A look at the Runner’s World records site http://www.runnersworld.com/stats/ultra.html shows the following:
Mens 50 Mile Track: 4:51
Mens 100 Mile Track: 11:30
Mens 50 Mile Road: 4:50
Womens 50 Mile Track: 5:55
Womens 100 Mile Track: 14:29
Womens 50 Mile Road: 5:40
Womens 100 Mile Road: 13:47
How about motorcycle racing? The riders bodyweight makes up a large percentage of the total weight, particularly in the lower classes, so a smaller woman would have a large advantage . But there are many less women who get into the sport, and the big money is in the higher classes where bodyweight is not quite as important and strength becomes more important.
Weight is not a serious issue in many styles of martial art. Ask any big man who faced a Gracie if weight was a factor. The members of the Gracie clan are predominantly small, but they dominate no-holds-barred fighting like the UFC. Also, many relatively recent martial artists have undisputed combat skills which don’t rely on size or weight (e.g. Morihei Ueshiba).
I don’t follow the UFC closely so I don’t know if women compete or not, and I’m not saying I can cite examples of women who are competitive in male circuits. I just wanted to disagree that weight was a deciding factor between skilled combatants.
IIRC the world record (my 1976 Guinness Book of World Records is in some unknown storage location) for consecutive one-armed pull-ups is/was held by a woman.
Granted, this is several years ago and is something I don’t have access to at this moment but a “one-armed pullup record” search on google gives this site:
Which is some random guy on a bulletin board pulling some random “fact” out of the air–sounds good to me!
Women should be able to compete against men quite well in figure skating and international ballroom dancing. The women in the latter are simply breathtaking.
No one has yet mentioned Calvinball. While there are no official rules (by definition), I wonder if Calvinball is sanctioned by G.R.O.S.S. (Get Rid Of Slimy GirlS), and thereby excludes females.
Obviously, Susie Derkins wouldn’t deign to play such a stupid game, but there may be girls out there who would (and who would probably do a decent job, too).
But isn’t it true that men can pull off more difficult jumps? I thought there were a few men who were known to be able to perform a quadruple axel (though I don’t know if it’s been done in competition), like Elvis Stoiko (sp) for instance.
Fencing
I was a fencer of above-average skill for a few years in college. My coach was a former Olympic competitor. In practice sessions, I competed regularly with female fencers. As long as the two oppponents are of similar height, in my opinion, there is no obvious advantage in gender. Good female fencers can compete at the same level as good male fencers. Since fencing tournaments are never televised in the US for any reason, I can’t compare the real pros to the competitiors I’ve seen in local tournaments, but I’d stack the best women against the best men any day.
Peakbagging
Another in which there is no advantage in gender (IMHO). As an untimed, distance-irrelevant sport, it relies on one’s navigation skill, endurance, and perseverance. Orienteering may also qualify to some extent.