I’d like to start with a few propositions, although please feel free to question them:
On the whole, there is more public interest in the ‘male version’ of a sport; men’s football, basketball, cricket, etc… is far more high-profile than the female equivalents. Tennis and beach volleyball are the only exceptions that come to mind - and perhaps some sub-genres of athletics.
This can no doubt in part be explained by biology; men are physically stronger so can run faster/throw or hit things further and faster/etc… Sports played by men are often - frankly - more interesting to watch.
Not always, though. Men have no intrinsic advantage in games such as snooker or darts, yet they still tend to publicly predominate.
There are virtually no sports in which men and women directly compete; mixed doubles in tennis being the notable exception.
This is in part due to fairness; a boxing match between a man and a woman would be a grim spectacle. But there are sports where men and women *could *compete yet don’t seem to.
Once we acknowledge and politely-move-to-one-side the ‘men are stronger’ argument, why are men’s sports more high-profile than women’s? Why don’t you see female snooker players playing against men? Is this all purely old-fashioned sexism?
“The male of the species has got a single-minded, obsessional type of brain that I don’t think so many females have. Women lack that single-minded determination to be the best in something that, it must be said, is a complete waste of time – trying to put snooker balls into pockets with a pointed stick.”
Are women strong enough to be snooker champs? Sure- but very few women will devote 12-16 hours a days for years on end to become the best in the world at anything as silly as snooker! Men are more likely than women to devote their lives to such a pursuit.
Men are stronger than women, so you’d EXPECT male golfers to drive farther than women (with occasional exceptions like Laura Davies). But male golfers are much, much better at putting and iron play than women, too. Why? Most male golf pros devote an insane amount of time to practice. Women generally won’t spend that same amount of time practicing chips and putts.
Which speaks WELL of women, if you think about it.
Gymnastics is another sport where women’s competition is more high-profile.
Don’t men have an advantage in things like darts? Just from informal observation, it seems like men tend to be better than women at that sort of thing too often to chalk it up to chance/coincidence. And even if we can’t cite any scientific studies proving the biological advantage (though we may be able to) doesn’t mean the advantage isn’t there. It may just mean it hasn’t yet been singled out and proven.
Does American Ninja Warrior count as a sport? They have men and women running on the exact same obstacle course.
I would imagine the reason men’s sports are more high-profile is because they’re more physically impressive. A woman can be physically impressive for a woman, but a man is more likely to be physically impressive for a human being.
As a woman who does weight lifting, I kind of hate being a woman, knowing how easier it would be to see gains if I were a man.
How about something where physical strength and agility have very, very little to do with it - chess? The top players are almost all men. Okay, you get the occasional Judit Polgar, but women are the exception rather than the rule.
I bring that up because, in sports where women should be able to compete with the men - auto racing comes to mind - it’s probably because far more men take up the sport than women at a level that you need to be in order to be among the best. Pretty much every sport requires years of specialty training of some sort, and in most cases, most women just don’t seem to be interested.
I would question the premise of #2. Although men perform at a more advanced level when strength is a key component, elite women demonstrate just as much athleticism and skill. And it can be interesting to watch women compete–I have enjoyed watching women’s college softball as much as men’s college baseball. Even though they don’t hit the ball farther or throw as fast as men, a competition between two teams at parity can be fascinating. There is so much more to competition than upper body strength. In addition, there seems to be no shortage of interest in women’s tennis, at least for the big-name tournaments.
The thing I really wonder about is why even women watch less women’s sports than men’s sport. You would think there would be more solidarity.
Sports are a fill-in for warfare. They’re a way to get the visceral emotion of war and victory without the accompanying death and destruction. There are very obvious biological reasons why watching young men march off to war can be glorious, but seeing young women do the same is much closer to heart-breaking. Even in vicarious wars, the emotions can still play tricks on you. So, is this sexism? Yes, but it’s sexism with an underlying biological basis. That doesn’t make it morally just of course, but you asked why it is, not whether it should be that way or not.
Why wouldn’t it be a sport? It’s certainly a sport. Not a very popular one, sure, but it’s a sport.
I really don’t know why it’s any more complicated than this.
Part of the fun for me of watching big league baseball, hockey and basketball as that I am watching the best baseball, hockey and basketball being played in the history of the world. I like watching the Canadian women’s hockey team against the USA and all but the quality of hockey is in no way comparable to NHL hockey.
I’m going to throw a wrench in the ‘men are more impressive and I want to watch humans at the height of their ability’ theory. My issue is college sports. They are incredibly popular, but they are almost definitionally not the height of athleticism. That goes for many lower-level sports. A high school boy’s basketball team is not as athletically impressive as a WNBA team, but they still remain quite popular. I was watching the women’s hockey games during the Olympics and they are right up there with men’s college hockey, very skilled players, but people will watch the Frozen Four and never take a gander at women’s hockey in general. I think there is more to it than simply ‘the quality is better.’
I suspect that, in the case of college and high school sports, there’s also a factor of following the teams of your alma mater (or a school that you wanted to attend, or the school in your home state). Also, in some areas of the country in which college sports (particularly football and basketball) are highly popular, there either (a) isn’t a local professional team, or (b) the local teams were expansion teams in the 1960s or later, long after the area’s college team(s) had established fervent fan bases.
But are they? I remember this debate about men’s and women’s soccer recently. However, the women’s US national soccer team, which competes for world championships, tends to get beat by teenage boys teams. Last year the FC Dallas (an MLS club) U-15 team beat the US Women’s Soccer Team 5-2 in a scrimmage.
So perhaps teenage boys may not be less athletically impressive than adult women’s teams.
You are correct that college basketball is not the height of athleticism. The thing is, an average Division I male team is going to beat any WNBA team three or four times out of five. So even if college basketball is not the pinnacle, a male team is going to be closer to that pinnacle than any female team.
Maybe the women’s hockey team is equally skilled. They are not as strong, not as fast, and not playing the game at nearly the same level.
I believe that one of the Williams sisters wondered if she and her sister could beat a male tennis player who was not ranked in the top 200. Karsten Braasch took them up on it - he was ranked 203rd at the time. He beat Serena 6-1 and Venus 6-2.
ETA: I read an article in SPorts Illustrated about someone who was trying to make the Olympics in women’s wrestling. She was competing against high school boys in training, and her record was (IIRC) 4-8. Is it remarkable that she won four matches? Sure. What isn’t remarkable is that she lost twice as many as she won, against high schoolers.
I meant to mention Formula 1 and other auto racing sports. I have no doubt that these are physically demanding, but probably not in a way that hugely advantages men. Why aren’t there any female F1 drivers? Are women even allowed to compete in F1? Or do they have their own separate (less-publicised) tournament?
How about jockeys? I remember there being a female jockey in the HBO series Luck - perhaps that’s another example of men and women competing openly. Although arguably horse racing is more about the horses than the people on top of them… One would think that ladies’ more diminutive stature would be an advantage.
A couple of women have won the Iditarod sled dog championship.
Lets not forgetMedusa, the female monster truck driver.
Its funny in youth sports like baseball, soccer, and hockey, girls at around age 12 are usually bigger and stronger than the boys their age and are often then able to compete equally. But that tends to end about age 14.
As far as I can tell, they aren’t prohibited, but there have been very few – and, apparently, only two have ever actually qualified for, and started, an F1 race, the most recent being in 1976.
More recently, there have been women who’ve been development drivers, or drove in practice sessions, but not in actual F1 races.
There are very few women in the Formula 1 development programs so there is little real opportunity for women to prove themselves on the same footing as men. There also seems to be some structural discrimination against women drivers at lots of levels in motor sports so there is little chance that women will be equally represented in auto racing any time soon. For some anecdotal examples of the discrimination that women in racing face, read this story about Aurora Straus:
Ms. Straus just won a GTSA-X race this weekend.
Carmen Jorda, a woman who was a Formula 1 development driver, has argued that women should have their own Formula 1 series. Most women who are actively racing in other series disagree.
This is likely the case in the top levels of U.S. track racing (i.e., NASCAR, Indy cars), as well – while there have been a few examples of female drivers who’ve had some success (Janet Guthrie in the 1970s, Danica Patrick more recently), as well as several other women who’ve competed in the Indy 500, I have no doubt that they face a lot of institutional sexism.
Interestingly, women have had more success in drag racing in the U.S. than in track racing.
I’ve noticed that too even though I’m just not interested in drag racing. In a road race or on an oval, you are competing against other drivers on the same surface for position. Other drivers can block your lines aggressively, even if that means slowing themselves down too. They can crash you out of a race. They could also just threaten to bump you or crash you out before the race even starts. Drag racing is fundamentally different. Drivers stay in their own lanes and each driver has only his or her own performance to manage and worry about. And under those circumstances, women tend to do pretty well.