# Historical question: Did sport divisions start segregating by sex because women were beating men in competitions? **URL:** \ **Category:** The Game Room\ **Created:** [July 23, 2026, 4:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/historical-question-did-sport-divisions-start-segregating-by-sex-because-women-were-beating-men-in-competitions/1031876 "2026-07-23T16:24:52Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![hajario](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hajario/32/171_2.png) [@hajario](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/hajario)\ **Post date:** [July 23, 2026, 9:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/historical-question-did-sport-divisions-start-segregating-by-sex-because-women-were-beating-men-in-competitions/1031876/41 "2026-07-23T21:31:35Z")
I suspect that there was never such a split but if there was one it was prehistorical. Off the top of my head I can think of two competitive sports where they made women’s divisions explicitly to get more women interested in the sport: poker and chess. There are enough very competitive women in poker now that they may not have women’s tournaments anymore. ---
**Author:** ![Telemark](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/telemark/32/372_2.png) [@Telemark](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Telemark)\ **Post date:** [July 23, 2026, 9:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/historical-question-did-sport-divisions-start-segregating-by-sex-because-women-were-beating-men-in-competitions/1031876/42 "2026-07-23T21:48:21Z")
> [@robby](#): > > “Elite” because of course an elite female athlete would wipe the floor with an out-of-shape male, and likely even an average male athlete. That depends on your definition of average male athlete. For example, the best women’s tennis players in the world have struggled against a mid or low level male college players, often husbands, brothers, or training partners. For women’s soccer, the best women’s teams often practice/scrimage against elite boys U15 teams. They aren’t intended to be competitive matches, but more to give the women a chance to get used to faster and stronger competition than they can get otherwise with women’s clubs. If they went up against an adult male college team they would not fare well. ---
**Author:** ![Hoopy\_Frood](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hoopy_frood/32/8452_2.png) [@Hoopy\_Frood](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hoopy_Frood)\ **Post date:** [July 24, 2026, 1:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/historical-question-did-sport-divisions-start-segregating-by-sex-because-women-were-beating-men-in-competitions/1031876/43 "2026-07-24T01:38:27Z")
There’s evidence that when it comes to sports involving extreme levels of endurance (e.g. ultramarathons), women have a natural advantage, and frequently outperform men. But participation by women is still comparatively low enough that there aren’t really enough statistics to prove a trend. ---
**Author:** ![Czarcasm](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/czarcasm/32/4050_2.png) [@Czarcasm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Czarcasm)\ **Post date:** [July 24, 2026, 1:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/historical-question-did-sport-divisions-start-segregating-by-sex-because-women-were-beating-men-in-competitions/1031876/44 "2026-07-24T01:44:06Z")
This would definitely be the time to post links to that evidence. ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [July 24, 2026, 1:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/historical-question-did-sport-divisions-start-segregating-by-sex-because-women-were-beating-men-in-competitions/1031876/45 "2026-07-24T01:53:46Z")
The list of swimmers who have crossed the English Channel seems to have a comparable number of men and women, and the only person ever to have made four crossings in a row was a woman. ---
**Author:** ![Telemark](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/telemark/32/372_2.png) [@Telemark](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Telemark)\ **Post date:** [July 24, 2026, 2:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/historical-question-did-sport-divisions-start-segregating-by-sex-because-women-were-beating-men-in-competitions/1031876/46 "2026-07-24T02:58:20Z")
Data shows that women are faster than men on ultramarathons over 195 miles. The male advantage starts out pretty high at shorter distances and steadily drops as the mileage increases, eventually switching over at 195 miles. > **[The State of Ultra Running 2020](https://runrepeat.com/state-of-ultra-running)** > > NEW: The State of US Marathons 2025 In this study, we explore the trends in ---
**Author:** ![keeganst94](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/a6a055/32.png) [@keeganst94](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/keeganst94)\ **Post date:** [July 24, 2026, 11:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/historical-question-did-sport-divisions-start-segregating-by-sex-because-women-were-beating-men-in-competitions/1031876/47 "2026-07-24T11:12:21Z")
In a naive reading, at least. I would be interested in whether the difference between the 100km, 100 mile and 195+ mile differences, which are all within 1.1% of each other and 1% of no difference between the genders, is actually statistically significant. At the very least, male and female performance seems to equalize or nearly equalize at 100 km or more. ---
**Author:** ![SanVito](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sanvito/32/2805_2.png) [@SanVito](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SanVito)\ **Post date:** [July 24, 2026, 11:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/historical-question-did-sport-divisions-start-segregating-by-sex-because-women-were-beating-men-in-competitions/1031876/48 "2026-07-24T11:15:21Z")
> [@Czarcasm](#): > > Can you point out an example where a sport initially allowed females, then changed their tune and kicked them out? I can’t. Famously in England in the early 1920s, the Football Association (soccer governing body) banned women from playing. The women’s game had drawn massive popularity during WW1, when the men’s league was suspended. Some games attracted 45,000 spectators. The FA worried that the women’s league would draw revenue away from the men’s game. They used bogus medical reasons, citing that football was detrimental to female physiology. Can’t tell you how much it makes my blood boil. > **[How the FA banned women’s football in 1921 and tried to justify it](https://www.theguardian.com/football/2022/jun/13/how-the-fa-banned-womens-football-in-1921-and-tried-to-justify-it)** > > A year after more than 50,000 turned up to watch Dick, Kerr Ladies play St Helens, a ban was introduced that was to last half a century ---
**Author:** ![kanicbird](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/5f8ce5/32.png) [@kanicbird](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kanicbird)\ **Post date:** [July 24, 2026, 11:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/historical-question-did-sport-divisions-start-segregating-by-sex-because-women-were-beating-men-in-competitions/1031876/49 "2026-07-24T11:39:29Z")
> [@ricepad](#): > > Physiologically speaking, about the only thing that gives women an advantage over men is greater endurance, if I recall correctly. In rock climbing also, women often match men but not through power, but by better technical placement, hip flexibility, and body positioning. ---
**Author:** ![puzzlegal](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/puzzlegal/32/3827_2.png) [@puzzlegal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/puzzlegal)\ **Post date:** [July 24, 2026, 11:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/historical-question-did-sport-divisions-start-segregating-by-sex-because-women-were-beating-men-in-competitions/1031876/50 "2026-07-24T11:58:14Z")
> [@r3bdr355](#): > > I’ve seen this argument being shared online but is there any historical evidence that prove this to be true? I have made this argument, but my claim is not that women were winning the top prizes. Yeah, maybe at shooting or speed puzzle solving, but not in general. My claim is that when our society first started letting girls play sports at all (something that happened mostly in my school cohort), they often did it by letting girls into the previously all-boy little league, etc. teams. Now, this is talking about kids, and at a point before everyone is segregated by ability and only the top players “make the team”. But at that point, the most athletic girls are better players than some of the boys. Not better than the most athletic boys, but i think the top 10% of the girls were better than the bottom 30% of the boys. And what that meant is that it was fairly common for a boy to be beaten by a girl. A friend had an unusually strong girl on his high school wrestling team, and he said a lot of boys forfeited, but when she competed, she won about half of her matches. Heck, there was a women in my college class who had a summer job as a lumber jack. She was _built_. My then-boyfriend described her as “large” and i assumed that was a euphemism for fat until i saw her. I’m sure she could take at least 70% of her male peers in a fair fight. She was probably top 0.1% strength for a woman, but those women exist. And they can’t beat the top 10% of men. But they can beat most of the boys in a typical highschool. And i think _that_ was the problem that led to uniformly segregating girls, not that girls weren’t winning often enough. ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [July 24, 2026, 12:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/historical-question-did-sport-divisions-start-segregating-by-sex-because-women-were-beating-men-in-competitions/1031876/51 "2026-07-24T12:44:23Z")
Lower body mass is probably also an advantage in rock climbing. ---
**Author:** ![Frodo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/frodo/32/302_2.png) [@Frodo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Frodo)\ **Post date:** [July 24, 2026, 1:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/historical-question-did-sport-divisions-start-segregating-by-sex-because-women-were-beating-men-in-competitions/1031876/52 "2026-07-24T13:09:13Z")
I tried to say the same thing here: > [@Historical question: Did sport divisions start segregating by sex because women were beating men in competitions?](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/historical-question-did-sport-divisions-start-segregating-by-sex-because-women-were-beating-men-in-competitions/1031876/21): > > I think we may be missing something in the men/women comparison. On average men will win physical competitions, but what about the men who end up ranking lower than the above average women?. Say you have a race and it ends up: 1st a man 2st a man 3rd a woman 4th a man. The man placed fourth may, specially a century ago, feel specially slighted at being “beat by a gurl”, and that may have caused extra trouble and influenced the eventual segregation of sports. but you did it better. ---
**Author:** ![TruCelt](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/trucelt/32/523_2.png) [@TruCelt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TruCelt)\ **Post date:** [July 24, 2026, 1:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/historical-question-did-sport-divisions-start-segregating-by-sex-because-women-were-beating-men-in-competitions/1031876/53 "2026-07-24T13:13:13Z")
I think what we are failing to account for is that the sports themselves - since their inception - and the rules of the sports, have been crafted to show the specific talents of men. Men’s basketball allows crowding and physical blocking because it is crafted for men. Golf courses have been designed for the distances that men can reach (thus the “women’s tees” to make things fair.) The lengths of the most popular races are limited to the endurance of men. It will be at least a century before the rules, field sizes, ball sizes, etc. are pushed toward an equal level and true competition between the sexes. ---
**Author:** ![Horatius](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/horatius/32/3572_2.png) [@Horatius](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Horatius)\ **Post date:** [July 24, 2026, 1:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/historical-question-did-sport-divisions-start-segregating-by-sex-because-women-were-beating-men-in-competitions/1031876/54 "2026-07-24T13:29:09Z")
> [@ricepad](#): > > I have no citations, but historically I would say that sports were the realm of men largely because men were able to generate free time to enjoy sports Also, historically, a lot of “sports” were originally just more polite ways of practicing the things men were expect to do in wars and such. Consider [the history of the Decathlon](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decathlon#Historical_background), and it’s all skills warriors would need in battle, and would practice constantly. Running, jumping, wrestling, throwing stuff. How much javelin throwing would you need to do to bake bread every day? ---
**Author:** ![puzzlegal](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/puzzlegal/32/3827_2.png) [@puzzlegal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/puzzlegal)\ **Post date:** [July 24, 2026, 1:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/historical-question-did-sport-divisions-start-segregating-by-sex-because-women-were-beating-men-in-competitions/1031876/55 "2026-07-24T13:33:05Z")
Most of the winners of speed jigsaw puzzle competitions today are women. That’s a coed sport, and while women dominate it, there are a non-trivial number of men, too. I just returned from a jigsaw puzzle event that had a small speed competition as part of it, along with a lot of “casual puzzling”. A guy I’m friendly with said that he had trouble doing puzzles (casually) with the top women, because he needs to separate the pieces to see the shapes, and they brush them close together. I don’t know if the top solvers rely more on color than on shape, or if they are better at seeing shapes in a cluttered visual field. (They also nice quickly and with great dexterity, of course.) But i refer to my prior post. I don’t believe there’s ever been an issue for men with women taking the top spots in sports that were, as mentioned, designed for men. But i do think that during the brief period of coed sports, there were issues with less athletic boys being bested by highly athletic girls. ---
**Author:** ![Odesio](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/odesio/32/20003_2.png) [@Odesio](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Odesio)\ **Post date:** [July 24, 2026, 1:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/historical-question-did-sport-divisions-start-segregating-by-sex-because-women-were-beating-men-in-competitions/1031876/56 "2026-07-24T13:33:36Z")
> [@TruCelt](#): > > I think what we are failing to account for is that the sports themselves - since their inception - and the rules of the sports, have been crafted to show the specific talents of men. Men’s basketball allows crowding and physical blocking because it is crafted for men. There’s no denying basketball was designed for men, James Naismith specifically designed it to provide young men with vigorous activity during rainy or wintery days, but is basketball today played the same way it was in the 1890s, 1920s, or even the 1950s? When I see old footage of basketball games I recognize what’s being played of course, but the players don’t move the same as they do today. i.e. Was crowding and blocking the same in 1920 as it was in 2020? ---
**Author:** ![msmith537](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/d9b06d/32.png) [@msmith537](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/msmith537)\ **Post date:** [July 24, 2026, 1:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/historical-question-did-sport-divisions-start-segregating-by-sex-because-women-were-beating-men-in-competitions/1031876/57 "2026-07-24T13:39:50Z")
> [@ricepad](#): > > I have no citations, but historically I would say that sports were the realm of men largely because men were able to generate free time to enjoy sports. Women tended to be too busy to engage in sporting events. Hence, nearly all sports were segregated because men played and women didn’t. Nothing to do with men getting all sore butted from losing to women. I also hear that historically speaking, men had JOBS where they had to actually go into an office, factory, or farm every day. ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [July 24, 2026, 1:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/historical-question-did-sport-divisions-start-segregating-by-sex-because-women-were-beating-men-in-competitions/1031876/58 "2026-07-24T13:46:39Z")
It’s probably too niche for this to exist, but I wonder if there are stats for different kinds of jigsaw puzzles? I certainly find that I have to rely more, less, or not at all on certain skills for certain individual puzzles: Are the pieces in a grid, or irregular? If a grid, are they all standard innie-outie-innie-outie, or can it vary? Are the pieces, on average, the same width and height, or different? Are the cuts precise enough and varied enough that you can always be sure just by the fit whether two pieces go together or not? And of course, details of the image can also make a difference. All of those will make a difference in what techniques I use. ---
**Author:** ![filmore](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/7993a0/32.png) [@filmore](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/filmore)\ **Post date:** [July 24, 2026, 2:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/historical-question-did-sport-divisions-start-segregating-by-sex-because-women-were-beating-men-in-competitions/1031876/59 "2026-07-24T14:00:00Z")
One reason that a certain gender is competitively better at an activity is because that gender spends more time on it. It seems like women do jigsaw puzzles more often than men, so it’s not surprising that the best puzzlers are women. I would also expect that the best jump ropers are women for the same reason. And it’s not surprising that the best darts players are men when men play darts a lot more than women. In an activity where out of every 100 participants 90 are one gender, then there’s a much better chance that a champion will emerge in that group of 90 rather than in the group of 10. Even if the competitive activities are equal from a gender perspective (e.g. at the Olympics), if one gender spends a lot more time on the activity, that gender will generally be better at it. For instance, snowboarding may have an equal split of genders at an event, but if more men have snowboarding as a hobby and they spend more hours at it, men will likely be better at snowboarding due to more hours spent doing it. ---
**Author:** ![puzzlegal](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/puzzlegal/32/3827_2.png) [@puzzlegal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/puzzlegal)\ **Post date:** [July 24, 2026, 2:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/historical-question-did-sport-divisions-start-segregating-by-sex-because-women-were-beating-men-in-competitions/1031876/60 "2026-07-24T14:11:21Z")
Maybe in another thread? Although I’m not an expert in the field, because after trying speed puzzling a couple of times, i decided it’s not something i want to do more of. But i have talked to people who do various forms of it, and I’m happy to share and to point you towards better sources. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/historical-question-did-sport-divisions-start-segregating-by-sex-because-women-were-beating-men-in-competitions/1031876.md?page=2) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/historical-question-did-sport-divisions-start-segregating-by-sex-because-women-were-beating-men-in-competitions/1031876.md?page=4)