Men vs Women - Result Analysis | Archery

[@jasonchard8636]

Depth of talent in sports plays a huge role in skewing results. When you’re selecting the top athletes from a group of 10,000 versus 100,000, statistically you’re more likely to end up with outliers-those individuals who are just better at a given sport. This makes larger talent pools an advantage, as the odds of discovering exceptional talent increase with the size of the group

[@dmfaccount1272]

This is what a study should look at to be honest. What I would really want to see is how many men and women have registered for competitions. @NUSensei trains students at a club, are there equal numbers of men and women who show up at tournaments? Is it even close? And I don't only mean participate, the participation numbers may be closer than the numbers of people who take it so far as to compete. I know when I have gone to ranges it has been 95% men shooting. But this club was a hunting club and hunting is a fairly traditional male activity. That said, hunting clubs are pretty much the o Ly thing available in large parts of the world. As such it's easy to see how it would become male dominated in places not like Korea where male and female archers are recruited from high school.

[@mozu305]

World Archery did report there was wind in the afternoon for the men, but still in the morning for the women in the Olympics at Paris.

[@lordcarnorjax8599]

It would be interesting to compare the same data from the world cup for the compound events between the mens and womens divisions. As compounds have a let off and are limited in WA to 60# the physical advantages that men would have would be less than a recurve.

[@NUSensei]

I just added that data to spreadsheet, covering the 2024 World Cup compound events. It's still very lop-sided: top 64 cutoff is 28-32% women, with men taking most of the top third.

[@paolo5701]

I guess the gap is even higher when it comes to field or 3D archery due to high poundage advantage.

[@blindarcher4962]

Until fairly recently, the para W1 was a combimed gender class, and still currently the para VI [visually impaired] is combined gender.

[@chrisgaskell3706]

I was just wondering if you are able to compare the scores for "mixed teams" where often it appears that the women outscore their male partner. Or is this too small a sample?

[@NUSensei]

It's not hard to compare the data, but the conclusion might be skewed without proper context. The ranking rounds show a clearer pattern, while elimination matches can play out differently due to a wider range of competition variables, including time pressure. One archer might take more time to deliver a perfect shot while the anchor position has to rush a shot. Ultimately, they're coordinating their shots with, not against, each other. It's also very skewed because only teams that have both a male and female archer in the event can even participate in mixed teams.

[@harrynamkoong3361]

So maybe the conclusion from this statistical analysis is Korean women should compete in their own division? They won 10 out of 10 team golds and 10 out of 11 individual golds in last 11 Olympic archery. Also add 2 "half" golds out of 2 for mixed team. So basically Korean women have won 22 golds out of possible 23 missing only on the individual in 2008 Beijing.

[@atrckr-bf7de]

very fair rules the bow poundage limitation, still target, and range "only" being at 70 meters maybe 90 makes it as fair as you can make it for both genders

[@David_randomnumber]

There are so many factors that help men get an advantage that for the top athletes women stand no real chance. But on a hobby level they certainly are a force to be reckoned with. On our state and national 3d championships men and women get sometimes thrown together and the difference there is nearly non existent.

[@Rich-xe4rw]

Korean women aren't outliers, every other national women's team are the outliers. With Korea we can see how women can perform when their participation numbers and support system, from grassroots to pro, are nearly on-par with men. So compare the Korean women to the Korean men and we'll see a more accurate comparison.

[@NUSensei]

That is, statistically, the definition of an outlier. The scope of the data covers participants at international events. International events have a limit on the number of participants. As Korea is the _only_ country with substantial support for women's pathways in archery, an all-Korean women's field would have greater parity with men, but that's not how the competition works in real life.

[@popcorngenerator1925]

Imagine seriously suggesting that the majority is an outlier

[@nightfog1722]

I would say it's not as simple as what some spread sheet can show. I've seen firsthand women outperforming men in archery on many occasions. Even when the odds were stacked against them. Some people, men and women can have explosive moments in archery. Their ability far exceeds what their typical ability level is. And their explosive ability becomes their new ability. You could be consistently ranked low in scores, yet be the best archer on a particular day, say in Matchplay or a QRE, Olympic game match for instance where you get the highest score. It's all an apples and oranges situation. You could consistently get higher scores, and a spread sheet might show that you're the better archer, but you end up losing out for an Olympic tryout event, or world championship event. To say that men are better archers because some spread sheet says so is oversimplifying matters.

[@NUSensei]

That wasn't the conclusion I made. Statistics apply to large populations, not individuals. A female archer might be individually better than men in a specific event, but men _systemically_ score higher than women. In theory, a female could be seeded low and still win the overall elimination. Statistically, the odds are against women qualifying for elimination, let alone win the tournament overall. The context is that some suggest that archery should be a mixed event, but the results show that the event would 3:1 in favour of men, so the sport at competitive level isn't ready to merge into a single-sex event.

[@nightfog1722]

@@NUSensei I dunno about all of it being a mixed event, but I think.. maybe some events could be? Hell, I came second to a woman recently in a matchplay event, she defeated all the men she competed against.. Including me 🤣. I'm a fairly experienced recurve archer too. In my personal experience, generally speaking I haven't seen much difference between men and women, maybe the exception is that men generally shoot higher powered bows and thus have an edge where flatter trajectory is important, such as windy conditions and longer range. But I'd put that more down to equipment.

[@NUSensei]

@@nightfog1722 To be clear, there are two different ends of the spectrum. The analysis covers world-level competition (Olympics, World Cups) in response to the suggestion that men and women compete in the same division. Here, the numbers are equal, but the average score for women is below that of men, so there isn't parity, so putting them together will generally mean that the elimination rounds will only have 25% women. The other end is grassroots level, where women are significantly under-represented, so putting them together is likely to deter women from competing against a male-dominant sport. This difference matters less in the middle, where a competitive female athlete will be equal to their male counterparts.

[@nightfog1722]

@@NUSensei yeah I agree with not merging the categories, cause doubt most women would feel comfortable with that. Just that in terms of skill, I haven't really noticed much disparity between genders in terms of ability that is particularly significant.

[@-fazik-3713]

Barebow can generate cool data too.