Long read: The sports where women outperform men

Evidence is emerging that in growing number of sports, women perform better than men. These remarkable feats by women are in turn throwing light on how evolution has made women stronger than men in several areas. That in turn is raising tricky questions about the role of gender in sports. Christine Ro of the BBC begins the piece by noting the available evidence with regards to male vs female performance differences:

“Øyvind Sandbakk, a professor of sports science at UiT The Arctic University of Norway and the director of the Norwegian School of Elite Sports (NTG), has found together with colleagues that the gaps in the average performance between elite female and male athletes have tended to plateau at around 8–12% difference in world-record results in favour of men. The gap can be significantly smaller for ultra-endurance swimming and larger for sports involving substantial upper-body strength, the study found…”

Then Ms Ro changes tack and brings in the growing body of evidence regarding women doing better than men in sports:

“Yet in long-distance events, being more measured with starting speeds and pacing can be an advantage. “Women generally seem to be better pacers, for instance in marathon runners,” says Sandbakk. And competitiveness is not just a matter of physiology, but also of social conditioning and psychology. While most research has focused on athletic prowess in children, there are some indications that the social environment surrounding girls can effect their competitiveness compared to boys.

Certainly, according to a scientific concensus issued in 2023 by the American College of Sports Medicine, the differences in athletic performance between girls and boys are “minimal” before puberty then leads to an increasing gap between them…”

Part of puzzle around women doing better than men focus on testosterone. Since testosterone is supposed to drive muscular strength and stamina, you would expect it to positively correlated with performance. But the evidence on this subject is mixed”

“Testosterone levels are generally linked to muscle size and strength, as well as higher haemoglobin concentration and thus better oxygen uptake. It has also been associated with more competitiveness in men. In terms of competitiveness, testosterone influences men’s tendency to take more risks, both within and beyond sports.

There is limited research on how testosterone affects women (or how oestrogen affects men). Men and women generally do not have overlapping ranges of testosterone…

There isn’t a clear linear relationship between testosterone levels and performance, says Mertens, a journalist focusing on sports and gender. “In fact, a lot of very elite male athletes have pretty low testosterone levels overall on average.” One endocrinology study found low testosterone concentrations in one-quarter of men competing in 12 of the 15 Olympic sports analysed. And Mertens says even women with hyperandrogenism, who can have testosterone levels that reach typical male ranges, don’t have the same level of performance as men…”

If hormonal differences are not the reason why women are being able to outperform men in sport, the search continues for the underlying driver. Christine Ro’s interview of Penny Lee Dean, the fastest swimmer (regardless of gender) to cross the English Channel, is revealing in this regard:

“Following a career as an elite swimmer, a physical education professor, and a water sports coach, Dean remains a passionate advocate of marathon swimming. She’s especially fond of the longer races, which she feels are the best showcase of the sport. But also, she reflects, “I think 20 miles (32km) and above, that women can beat men.” Dean believes a key reason is that “if the water’s colder, the women have the advantage”….

It may be that women’s typically higher proportion of body fat is helpful for regulating body temperature in cold water, as well as for floating. “For normal temperature ranges, the men tend to be faster,” says Ned Denison, chair of the executive committee of the International Marathon Swimming Hall of Fame…

Sports journalist Mertens says that body fat is also “really helpful for these endurance races because after a while of running, that’s what your body starts to fuel off of”.

“And if you don’t have that much, you can’t go as far,” says Mertens.

Compared to swimming, sports scientist Sandbakk believes that women may have less of an edge in other cold-weather ultra-endurance sports because proper clothing in those sports helps with thermoregulation.

But Dean believes that any upper hand women might have in open-water swimming over long distances is more about mental adaptation and the ability to withstand discomfort than about insulation. Her mental training in her English Channel days involved reviewing index cards with mantras such as “the colder the water, the better” and “with each stroke, my arms get better and better”.”

Ms Ro says that women’s edge over men in sport seems to be underpinned in their ability to take greater pain and recover faster from physical fatigue:

“In ultradistance events, the ability to juggle more factors, from weather to pain, becomes particularly important. In ultrarunning competitions, the longer the distance, the smaller the gap between the times of men and women. A 2020 analysis of ultrarunning results showed that beyond 195 miles (314km), women were 0.6% faster.

Overall, there is mixed evidence about how women’s tolerance of pain differs from men’s. At an elite sports level, comparisons are difficult, Sandbakk says. But women may have other advantages. While some research suggests that women recover faster after exercise, this could be due in part to their lower muscle mass and power production, which affect muscle fatigue. There may also be a link to greater flexibility in women and girls, helping with reduced stiffness.”

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