Why don't more sports have men and women competing equally

Nwm2 wrote: »

Read my post again, a bit slower this time, and you will see that I don't.

I never commented on getting paid, I said prize money. You then asked me about wages - I never mentioned wages in my original post. You changing the topic of conversation doesn't mean I haven't read it.

Cookie_Monster wrote: »

high level motorsport requires extreme fitness and very strong muscle mass to counter g forces. For the most part women cant build that same muscle mass. Danica Patrick competes in Nascar though.

There are a couple of women test drivers in F1 too but their results are terrible and they're only there on money or political reasons rather than all out talent

The way F1 is in recent years you can say the same about a lot of the male drivers.

the only reason there aren't many women competing near the top levels of motorsport is there aren't enough competing at the lower levels. For every driver that makes it to the top there are thousands who've failed along the way.

http://www.independent.co.uk/sport/rugby/rugby-union/international/female-rugby-player-breaks-nose-continues-playing-proceeds-to-tackle-two-more-players-10301813.html

Hard!

Peruzzi wrote: »

This is a ridiculous argument, bricklayers work harder than footballers, should they be paid as more than footballers?

What people are paid is based on the harsh reality of economics, supply and demand, female athletes are paid less because there is less demand. People don't care as much about watching female athletes.

Totally agree, its not the marketing strategies that are different its the product. Its like comparing a fillet mignon to a minute steak. Basically the same but vastly different

Princess Consuela Bananahammock wrote: »

I stand by my opinion that the prizes should be the same, irrespective of monies earnt. They work as hard and put the same number of hours in. Are women at fault because people choose not to watch or becausecthe marketing strategies are different?

There certainly is an argument that life would be fairer if what people were paid purely depended on how hard they worked or how many hours they put in. So a toilet cleaner would earn as much as a CEO. Or a bottom-division soccer player who worked as hard as Ronaldo would be paid as much. Or the winners of the Heineken Cup would win as much as the winners of the Champion's league.

But that's an imaginary world.

In the real world, the money that's paid out has to come from somewhere. And that depends on how many people are watching.

You want the winners of the women's soccer World Cup to be paid as much as the men's. Even though the men's brings in billions of dollars and entertains hundreds of millions of people, and the women's only a tiny fraction of that. That's not a 'difference in marketing strategy', people are simply not as interested. So if people don't want your product, you're just not going to earn as much from your attempts to sell it.

That's quite fair when you think about it.

ForEffsSake wrote: »

Ultra marathons. Women and men compete as equals in those. Men are stronger and faster but over long distances. physiologically women are more efficient at breaking down fat for energy so it starts to even up a bit.
The hunter/gatherer argument for snooker is boll*x. I think it's simply down to snooker halls often being a bit rough and intimidating for women. I don't really think of darts and snooker as sports really anyway, more skills.

spacial awareness, men are proven to be superior, and that is a skill needed in snooker

ForEffsSake wrote: »

Ultra marathons. Women and men compete as equals in those. Men are stronger and faster but over long distances. physiologically women are more efficient at breaking down fat for energy so it starts to even up a bit.
The hunter/gatherer argument for snooker is boll*x. I think it's simply down to snooker halls often being a bit rough and intimidating for women. I don't really think of darts and snooker as sports really anyway, more skills.

The whole premise of snooker is judging pace, distance and angles all of which men are proven to be much superior at. Calling it complete boll0x does not offer a counter argument or change a scientifically proven fact.

I'm very involved in the sport of gymnastics, which I often tell people is a sport that, where gender is concerned, is a bit different than most other sports.

In gymnastics, the women do 4 events and the men do 6. Only one event - the vault - is pretty much the same. The others are very different, even floor exercise, which both genders do but under very different rules. The women's events were introduced in the late 1940s because it was felt that the men's sport was too physically demanding for women and not feminine enough. It's kind of sexist, if you think about it. Not sure that would fly in today's world!

But it worked out for the women, didn't it? Gymnastics is one of the few sports where the women's sport is more popular than the men's. At least, that's true in the US. Female gymnasts do less events than their male teammates, but the men's program in the US is funded by the women's program. USA Gymnastics can't hold a standalone men's event and expect to draw any crowds - it has to be paired with a women's competition if they want to make money.

Even at the most recent competition I went to - it was a dual meet and men and women were competing at the same time. They advertised the meet as starting at 12pm, when in actuality it had started an hour earlier with the men doing two rotations. But the meet was advertised at starting at noon because that's when the women's competition started. At the awards ceremony, the men's winners were announced, but they weren't included in the ceremony, which focused entirely on the women, who also stayed afterwards to sign autographs and greet fans.

I think one of the reasons why women's gymnastics has become more popular here is because generally speaking they can't be compared to their male teammates directly. It's a different sport designed to highlight (at least some times) more traditional female sporting strengths - grace, flexibility, precision, agility.

Some comparisons can be drawn, especially on vault and in tumbling, but the men's AA world champion and the women's AA world champion both do the same vault, so even at that, you're still seeing a pretty high level of acrobatics in women's gymnastics.

Anyway, that's my two rambling cents.