I saw than Danica Patrick won the pole position for the Daytona 500. I think that’s great and my post isn’t really about her directly.
It seems that there are some activities where it makes sense to have separate competitions for men and women, particularly those where physical size and strength are major factors (football, boxing, etc).
But I could never understand why there are separate billiard competitions for men and women. I’m sure there are other competitions that can be called into question on this point, but this particular one has always puzzled me. What is the basis for this continued separation by sex?
Reach would be a relevant factor - that is, having a longer reach would tend to be advantageous. And of course men, on average, have longer reaches than women.
But that consideration would support classifying players directly by height or arm length, not indirectly by sex. I suspect the truth is that billiards was historically played in bars, where no (respectable) woman would go, so they played separately - and they still do.
Another factor is that men are more variable than women; there tend to be more men at the extremes of most everything. This makes a big difference in competitive sports, which by design select out the best performers from the average. Even if women are as good or a bit better than men on average, the very best top few percent of players will likely be male. So will the worst, but no one will notice or care about that.
Pretty much all sports or competitions of any kind segregated men and women decades ago, regardless of any actual competitive sex differences. Social inertia alone will maintain the segregation longer than a realization that there are no relevant differences in a particular competition would suggest desegregation would work.
As the OP pointed out, auto racing has no relevant differences, but how long did it take for women to be allowed (either officially, or by social convention) to compete directly with men?
This seems misleading: At the top level of the vast majority of sports, women are allowed to compete equally with men. It’s because they are rarely able to do so that a segregated division excluding men exists.
(Indeed, I can’t offhand think of a sport that has an elite men’s division from which women are explicitly excluded. Any candidates?)
I could believe women on average were not as good as men but I would be amazed if there is any particular reason the best billiards player in the world couldn’t be a woman… Which brings me onto another point: billiards as I understand it is basically “solved” and any decent player can get a gazillion points (not sure if points is right term as I have no idea how to pay bollards, having been assured by snooker players what I assert he is the case) so why couldn’t a woman learn how to do that?
I wasn’t talking about ‘rules’ that specifically exclude them from competing with men. I was talking about ‘social conventions’ where it’s just expected that they won’t even try to ‘join the men’s team’ or whatever. Decades ago, that was the social norm. Although that’s been changing over the last several decades, inertia alone is enough to maintain the old convention, within a given sport, longer than the society at large has the convention.
What’s that now? They would allow every maid and scrubber to join us in the billiards room? Nonsense! Absurd! They should be playing draughts and bridge in the parlor, with the other old hens! If women were allowed to play at sport, who should make my dinner?
I have a interest in Billiards. One of the interesting things is that it always seems like the women’s competitions are the ones that are televised and the men’s rarely are. However, I think that’s just because the women’s competitions tend to be more competitive.
Anyway, there are some amazingly talented women playing billiards right now, and I imagine a few of them at their peeks, could be competitive in a lot of the men’s tournaments, but ultimately the best men are just better and I doubt any of the women would have much of a chance.
Yes, I would agree that men don’t have much of an advantage in billiards, at least not to the same degree as in football, basketball, or tennis, but men still have some definite advantages. Height and reach are probably one of the biggest advantages. Strength is also an advantage, though I think that comes up a lot less often. Also, in general, men have better spatial awareness, though, again, I think anyone playing at a professional level will have sufficient understanding of all of that. Ultimately, though, I think the higher variability in men ends up being the difference maker as it is with any sort of competition where the physical advantages of men are less obvious and that it’s just traditionally more of a mens game so there’s social barriers to women being competitive.
Women do compete against men in billiards. Jasmin Ouschan is one example, she’s been competing in men’s tournaments for quite a while. She’s been the #1 woman player before, but looks like 3rd is her best finish in a men’s tournament.
So you believe there were women who could have successfully competed with men, but were held back by social convention? Any examples?
1938 ought to qualify as decades ago - that was when Babe Didrikson first qualified for and played in a PGA golf tournament. We have above been given the example of a female NASCAR driver (Louise Smith) in 1949.
This is implausible. Elite athletes - such as Babe Didrikson - are less likely than the average person to be bound by societal norms. Jackie Robinson’s talents got him onto a major league baseball team well before this was conventional in society at large.
