We Need to Stop Separating Athletes by Sex — It Diminishes Women
By: Sarah Stroh
Tags: This Happened To Me, Culture, Feminism, Psychology, Women

When my parents enrolled me in my first soccer league at the tender age of seven, I never questioned the fact that my team was made up of only girls.

In high school playing on the Varsity soccer team with all women, I never questioned that either.

Then after moving to New York after college, I joined a recreational soccer league for adults. For the first time in my life, I was playing organized soccer with both men and women.

But only on the physical plane.

On the mental plane, I was still only playing with women. When I judged my own individual performance, I only took the other women into account. I only wanted to be better than they were.

And it seemed to be generally agreed upon by the men and women on both sides of the field, that the women would defend one another, further emphasizing the fact that we were playing with each other as opposed to with everyone else.

The “female” standard

The standard I held myself to then and throughout my whole life was a standard of womanhood.

And without anyone saying it outright, we all understood this standard was the less-talented standard. The good, but never quite good enough standard. The even if you’re “the best”, you still won’t really be the best because you’re not a man and you never will be standard.

Yup, that one.

And that is the problem. As a female athlete, you automatically hold yourself to a lower standard than whatever the best is. Without even consciously realizing it, you do it.

The separation of men and women in sports is psychologically diminishing to women.

But what about biological differences?

And I know what you’re thinking right now: Men are better than women at sports, it’s just biology.

And I concede there are real biological differences between men and women. One has on average more testosterone. The other has on average more body mass. One has a more on average muscle…okay you get the point.

But the keywords here are on average.

The biggest woman in the world is not smaller than the largest man. The strongest woman is not weaker than the weakest man. The fastest woman is not slower than the slowest man. Far from it.

The world’s 10th fastest men’s marathon runner finished roughly 10 minutes before the world’s fastest women’s marathon runner. That’s a lot of minutes, but it’s not insurmountable.

And according to a study of ultramarathon runners, “when people race beyond 195 miles, the average pace of a woman is slightly faster than the average pace of a man, at 17:19 min/mile for women, and 17:25 min/mile for men.”

So why separate based on gender? Aren’t there other ways we can separate the competition?

If we want to somehow level the playing field, giving people who are smaller, let’s say, the opportunity to compete in sports, such as basketball then maybe we should separate based on physical height, not based on gender.

Sort of like we do in wrestling with weight.

A photo from my first soccer team // Photo provided by author

In a high school, you could have a varsity team where any height is allowed. Then you might have the Varsity II team where only people up to six feet tall are allowed. And so forth.

One could argue, in that case, the Varsity team would still be all men. That might be true. It might not, but let’s continue with that line of reasoning.

Even if the varsity team were all men, it wouldn’t be any different from how things are currently.

Even though currently there is usually an all-women varsity team as well, we’re not fooling anyone when we declare that team the best, whether it’s college or professionally. We know they are still not really the best.

They’re only the best when you exclude half the population from competing against them.

When we separate teams based on other metrics, such as height or weight, there will still be more men at the top, at least initially, but that is not any different from the current reality.

Separate but equal doesn’t work

In today’s world of sports, women are not even given a chance to be the best. At anything. Because we’re always separate.

As Joe Duncan, who also wrote about this topic says, separate but equal doesn’t work in race, so why should it work with gender?

In 1896, the supreme court ruled against separate but equal because they realized you could never be separate and equal.

Furthermore, as the very definition of gender expands and blurs it’s going to be increasingly hard to draw a line between men and women.

About 0.6% of Americans are transgender and the number is growing. And that number does not include the growing number of individuals who prefer not to take on a gender label at all.

Additionally, roughly 1.7% of individuals are intersex, meaning they have biological features associated with both sexes. For example, a person born with a vagina, the female sex organ, who has the XY chromosome, typically associated with men.

From a logistical standpoint, separating men and women will also become more and more difficult. All the more reason to solve this issue now by not separating athletes based on gender at all.