Why Do Men and Women Compete Separately? | Archery

[@thevagabondonwheels4918]

Personally, I think the best reason to persist with this is one you mentioned: engagement. The same is true of all of the shooting events as well, where the genetic advantages that men have are minimal. Perhaps someday we will culturally get to a point where women naturally gravitate towards competitive sport as much as men do, but we just aren't there yet. In the meantime, we should keep the separate divisions for that reason alone, even in sports where women's physical disadvantages are not very pronounced.

[@jancello]

The conclusion is very interesting, with the "social" aspects that surround the sport having a high influence on both grassroot recruitment into the sport and willingness/opportunity to train and compete. An extreme example is horse-riding: most if not all of the physical requirement relies on the animal, and the lower-body stability that you mentioned might give women a slight edge. And despite the historically highly masculine aspect of horse-riding, in clubs, especially among juniors, girls are an overwhelming majority, and as a result in local junior competitions winners are overwhelmingly female. But at international level among senior competitors, women are suddenly few and far between, for three main reasons: 1) women are left in charge of the majority of household chores and parenting, so upon reaching adulthood have to give up on their hobby more often than men, 2) social construct requires men to be competitive and women to be caring, so when riding becomes more a matter of winning at all costs than enjoying the connexion with the horse, men are more likely to choose that path than women, and 3) pregnancy and riding are highly incompatible, and even for top-level riders clubs and federations don't care about supporting them during pregnancy and maternity and helping them back to top level after that. These elements are present for all sports, but are caricatured to the extreme with horse-riding. So, with archery, while there might be anatomical advantages to men (draw-weight, arm skeletal structure...) there might also be a trend of the gap shrinking with time - and while the physiological differences might create a limit to that shrinking, it's not impossible to think that in the near future, there could be for example a mixed 18-m indoor under-35# category at the Olympics.

[@interuniversal321]

You made really good points. Though seems men and women are potentially able to compete with each other, so maybe there could be mixed competitions. Incidentally we need more archery that involves moving targets.

[@ARana-om7tm]

There is a doubles mixed team in the Olympics if I’m not mistaken

[@Ace_USVI]

very well said and explained with data. I will show this to some of the women in my club. This one lady is working on 50m and I told her that's something to be proud of.

[@mememaster9703]

on your point about draw weight and wind spread, I think the draw weight alone is important wind obviously is a factor but even in an indoor event, draw weight should effect grouping simply because of the smaller trajectory and lower margin of error/variation edit: your point is also strengthened by the fact that some men shoot lower dw bows and some women shoot higher. Kim Woojin shot a 46lb iirc and Lim sihyeon shoots 45 (according to a 2019 forum post)

[@mozu305]

This was also shown when there was a mixed gender class in two of the largest archery tournaments in the US in barebow: The Lancaster Archery Classic and the US Indoor Nationals. In both cases, not only were the women in the clear minority, the women never made the finals. This in spite of some of the world's best female barebow archers competing. Taking the top archers as an example as always suspect because their performance is an outlier by definition--as you point out. It is also important to note, the world record for the 70m qualification round for men is 702 shot by Brady Ellison and the Olympic record of 700 shot by Kim Woojin.

[@bambuwuzled]

2024 Olympic archery gear list video? 🙏

[@homerj806]

Fun fact: like many other equestrian sports, men and women compete together in mounted archery.

[@atrckr-bf7de]

Zhang was the first & only women to get to the podium, in 1991 they had decided that women would have a separate division after the 92 Olympics, society is flawed this story is exaggerated

[@thevagabondonwheels4918]

My old shotgun coach was actually in the International mix when all this went down so I got the inside story. He even did some coaching with the Chinese national team back then. The ISSF (then the UIT) was an incredibly sexist organization back in 1992 and they were absolutely scandalized when Zhang Shan won the gold, even though Zhang was one of six women in the competition. The UIT's "solution" was a bit of a bribe. They told the top women shooters that they would create their own women-only event starting in 1996 (double trap) but that they would no longer be able to complete in skeet or trap. Since women would now be guaranteed three medals for themselves, they gladly signed on to the deal. Kim Rhode won her first of many medals by winning the double trap in Atlanta and rest should have been history...except. What a lot of people don't realize is that while a city has to kiss a lot of butts to win the right to host a Games, once they have done so, they actually have a lot of power. And Sydney basically told the UIT to pound sand and opened up men's and women's events all three of skeet, trap, and double trap. Part of the reason they did that is because they had one of the world's best MEN's double trap shooters, who did end up taking the silver. And after Sydney the genie was out of the bottle and it stayed like that until, ironically, WOMEN's double trap, an event originally created just for them, was cut from the 2008 Games but men's remained. Men's would go bye-bye as well, but not until 2020 when they introduced mixed team events.

[@derekofbaltimore]

the fact that women would fall lower in the ranks doesnt answer why they are separate. There are plenty of men (elite level) who will never be top ten, that doesnt mean that the bottom level men should be separated from the top

[@NUSensei]

There's no issue with men not making top ten. Those who don't qualify... don't qualify. That's status quo. The issue is when women and men compete together under the assumption that they are equal. The data at elite level clearly says that they are not. If only 3 out of the top 16 are women, that's not a good indicator that the sport is ready to combine into one event. Even if a woman wins an open tournament, the net effect may result in reduced representation. The middle of the field athlete at world level wouldn't make the cut in an open event where 80% will be men.

[@derekofbaltimore]

@@NUSensei what i mean is that if women consistently placed in top fifty it wouldn't be any different than for any man who consistently placed outside top fifty. To say that those (poor) showings would cause a lack of confidence in women would, to me, be the same as any male professional sports team which hasn't been to playoffs in past twenty years- They still play, the still compete, they dont expect a separate league to cater to them Whats the difference in your opinion?

[@NUSensei]

@@derekofbaltimore One word: *If.* I'm actually releasing a video reply to this comment that does more number crunching. I combined the men and women for the past 4 Olympics, as well as the World Cup events from 2024 and 2023 which have more participants. I used the top 64 as the cut-off for the elimination rounds as is standard for World Archery events. The 2024 Olympics was exceptional in that the combined top 64 would be 40% women. However, one must remember that the weather conditions were different: the women shot in the cooler morning while the men shot in around 29 degrees Celsius in the afternoon, so the men's score was on average lower than usual. When I compared other events, the split in the top 64 was usually around 25% women, to as low as 10%. _Some_ women can consistently rank in the Top 64, but most do not. That reflects a systemic difference between men and women in the event. Is it really fair to combine the two with the finals being vastly dominated by men? With 80% of women competitors not really having a chance to make the cut? Secondly, this has the flow-down effect. That's the world's best we are comparing. The gap is far wider at lower levels, and it wouldn't make sense for women to struggle through a mixed event at state and national level, nor would it make sense to separate them at these levels but combine them at international level.

[@derekofbaltimore]

@@NUSensei im not denying they may struggle. You certainly know your stuff and i appreciate you bringing data. But still just because a group stuggles doesn't automatically result in a split league. Examples where i would agree with your assessment- Combat sports (gender and weight classes) Para and special olympics Amateur vs professional leagues (farm system in baseball for example) Examples where just because a group could and do perform poorly they can still try against the big boys Mr olympia(many many dynasties where there was a single winner for 5-6-7-8 years in a row. In a competition about aesthetics and preference it could be argued the judges simply liked one guy for a while and thus the other competitors really had zero chance to win.. But still competed) Open chess ( bestwomen fall outside of the top 100 but still enter competition) Detroit lions (haven't been TO a superbowl in almost 60 years but officials dont feel sorry for them and make a new league where they can dominant) Short men in nba ( there is no official minimum height cutoff though statitics could be used to justify one) I think that if you data is the reason the officials in archery have split the leagues then cool. But to me the question can only really be asked of those who made the recommendation.

[@wolfen8622]

This topic again? Perfect example as always; Chess. Yes, there are some really good female players that could easily beat male players but in the top 100 chess players there are literally barley 3 female players and that’s being very generous. (Side note; I think these debates come from individuals complaining that women are not making the same $$$ as men.. )🤷‍♂️

[@NUSensei]

There's also a nuance with chess: there is no separate men's division. It is an open division that anyone can enter. The Women's Championship was specifically created to promote chess among women.

[@Llyrana7]

👍

[@Luziferne]

The main cause was that when it was still a mixed, women consistently beat man in the competition. And as it was still in times were woman equality was something that was, well, to say the harsh truth, frowned upon, the sport association of the bad old days couldn't let it slide and at 1st banned woman altogether and later split man and woman competitions Many man still do have that male superiority mindset & the frail ego that comes with it, that they wouldn't be able to loose against a woman without them seeing it as loosing face through it To those man I only can say Git Gut or git lost!

[@DoubtinThomas]

Surely you did not watch the video.

[@queerdor]

The video isn't accurate. ​@DoubtinThomas

[@darkshamrock1980]

​@@queerdor"This video isn't accurate because I don't agree with it."

[@popcorngenerator1925]

@@queerdorcare to elaborate?