For sure. I grew up in West Los Angeles and went to Laker games with my dad starting in 1970 or so and when I was in High School in the early 80s I went to lots of Laker games with my friends. I was there at the Forum when they won it all in 1982.
Unless they were playing the Celtic or the 76ers or something, lots of tickets were available on game day and you got half price tickets with student ID so it cost $3.50 for a cheap seat and you could always sneak down to better seats. I sat courtside once because someone didn’t show up.
As I mentioned above, I was at Game 6 of the finals when they won it all. My seat was at half court about right in front of the press box. I bought my ticket from a scalper for $35, about a day’s pay at minimum wage.
I checked Wikipedia and in the summer games the U.S. Olympic Team has had more women than men since 2012. I suspect the disparity is because of sports like soccer; the U.S. men don’t always qualify for the Games, and the women do. In the process of checking that, I noticed that Olympic soccer at the last few Games have had 16 men’s teams and 12 women’s. For 2028 that will be reversed; 16 women’s teams and 12 men’s.
I’ve never crunched the number, but I wonder how many events there are for men and women across the entirety of an Olympics. Men’s gymnastics (the traditional sort) have two more apparatus than the women; the events in rhythmic gymnastics are only for women. For the last Olympics the rules for artistic swimming were changed to allow 2 men on each team in the mixed event, although none actually participated. I think women’s swimming used to have fewer events than the men’s (no 1500m, for example) but I don’t think that’s the case anymore.
Google AI says there were 157 events for men and 152 for women (and 20 mixed gender) at the 2024 Games. I’m not getting a clear answer on the proportion of male and female athletes.
more competitive, but no, still not competitive. And the reason is that, let’s say the hole is 175 yards. Men are hitting maybe a 7 or 8 iron into that green with a much higher ball flight and backspin. Women are hitting maybe a 4 or 5 iron, at much lower trajectory and with much less backspin. Women will have trouble holding that green with their tee shots, while men will be able to take dead aim at the pin and have it stick close.
Paris 2024 Olympics were 50/50 male/female for the first time:
After having women represent 45.6% of competitors at Rio 2016 and 48.8% of competitors at Tokyo 2020, the 10,500 athlete quotas were allocated across the competition program to allow for an even 50-50 split of men and women at Paris 2024.
Also:
The first time Paris hosted the Olympic Games in 1900, only 2.2 percent of competitors (22 of 997) were women.
And:
When the Olympic Games returned to the French capital in 1924, the percentage had risen ever so slightly, but women still represented just 4.4 per cent of participating athletes (135 of 3089).
Link:
Edit:
Wikipedia says there were 10,714 athletes at the 2024 Olympics.
According to the wiki there were 5357 male athletes and 5357 female. This was the first time there had been as many female as male but the numbers of both were down on Tokyo “2020” (in 2021) (5982 male, 5494 female). The proportion of women has gradually increased over time, in 1896 there were no females, in 1900 there were 24 women (and 1202 men). The fastest rise was in the 80s and 90s, the proportion of women doubled from 20% in Moscow 1980 to 40% in Sydney 2000
I’m not sure why you think that. There certainly were women’s only competitions namely golf, sailing, singles tennis and croquet. They also participated in equestrian which in my lifetime was always mixed gender but may not have been then.
Women’s-only competitions surely existed at the time, but I’m saying in that particular Olympiad. Even one women’s event with solo competitors, with 24 nations each sending one competitor, would already account for all 24 female athletes, and a team event, or more countries participating, or multiple female events, would put it over. That’s why I don’t think that those 24 women were competing in women’s-only events.
Poking around the wikipedia, I see that there were women’s only golf (an American took gold! USA!) and tennis events, and a co-ed croquet competition. There were three women in the croquet, and I’d guess the other 21 were divided between the golf and tennis.
I’m not the OP, but I’ve seen this mentioned by people in discussion threads on reddit and fark. It’s even been stated in threads here on the SDMB. But just anecdotally. Never any actual cites.
I make no claims about “sports divisions”, and i think it’s implausible that women were beating men at high levels of anything, in enough numbers to matter.
My claim is about how the social norm that “we should have all separate women’s events” rather than “we should generally allow anyone qualified into this event” came about. I’m sure that some sports would always have been segregated. Probably, there wouldn’t be a lot of women’s professional sports without segregation. But there might be a lot of coed little league stuff.
