Some of you are good librarians. You gals & guys are good at researching someone's work. Learn how to use a calculator gals & guys:
Sub-3 hour or 2:59:59 Marathon is 10799 seconds. There are two women world records: 2:17:01 or 8221 seconds; 2:14:04 or 8044 seconds so, 1.313587155 x 7269 = 9548.46503 or 2:39:08 or 1.342491298 x 7269 = 2:42:38
Some of you are good librarians. You gals & guys are good at researching someone's work. Learn how to use a calculator gals & guys:
Sub-3 hour or 2:59:59 Marathon is 10799 seconds. There are two women world records: 2:17:01 or 8221 seconds; 2:14:04 or 8044 seconds so, 1.313587155 x 7269 = 9548.46503 or 2:39:08 or 1.342491298 x 7269 = 2:42:38
Note: 2:01:09 is 7269 seconds.
Learn how to do statistics. The women’s population data doesn’t follow a normal distribution, being more skewed to the right. Therefore it’s not appropriate to use a linear comparison based on the gender gap of World Records. Using rank ordered data is a more appropriate way to compare women’s and men’s times. The World Athletic rankings based on years of data provides more data than just a single race or extrapolating based on two outlying data points (World Records).
I think it's mostly socialization. Boys are pushed to compete in sports from a young age, and while the opportunities available to girls have greatly increased in recent decades, gender roles still exist and sports are still a male-coded activity. In general, girls aren't expected to perform the same way. Obviously the physical differences between men and women are real and explain the 10-12 percent performance gap at the top, but you'd see a lot more depth in women's running if girls were socialized the same way as boys.
People give "socialization" way too much credit. Kids gravitate towards what they like. I've given all my children exposure to a variety of activities. My girls have made it very clear they prefer dance and gymnastics. This has been obvious from a young age. It motivates them and they can't get enough of it. So they're given more opportunities.
My boys love running and team sports. I've tried to encourage my girls, but they're just not interested. We've put my boys in "cool" dance classes with other boys and they absolutely hated it. So we let them choose something else.
Many studies show innate gender differences in preferences from a very young age, even a few weeks old. Ignoring this is weird and regressive.
My wife got me into Irish Dancing (a traditionally female sport) and I love it. It's helped my flexibility and speed in some situations...there are only a few men but it's all good.
It's a bit anaerobic in parts so it'd help my 5k stamina actually. A lot of those (men and women) who do dance and gymnastics work just as hard as us runners!
This post was edited 18 seconds after it was posted.
I think it's mostly socialization. Boys are pushed to compete in sports from a young age, and while the opportunities available to girls have greatly increased in recent decades, gender roles still exist and sports are still a male-coded activity. In general, girls aren't expected to perform the same way. Obviously the physical differences between men and women are real and explain the 10-12 percent performance gap at the top, but you'd see a lot more depth in women's running if girls were socialized the same way as boys.
I'm not so sure that it's mostly socialization. We've had relative gender equality in sports for several decades, and the male/female performance gaps haven't moved much since the 80s. Some girls and women just aren't interested in playing sports; many gravitate towards other physcial activities like dance and gymnastics (still a sport, but one that is much more popular among girls).
The other thing is that, in a speed/efficiency-based sport like distance running, talent is related to morphology. Not many women are shaped liked elite distance runners. Obviously, the sex performance gap is less with distance running than with many other sports, but this does not mean that the distribution of talent within the male and female category is the same. It's possible that fewer women have elite/sub-elite morphology than men. I don't know if this is the case, but it makes sense on a hypothetical level. While many women with relatively wide hips and large breasts can hit/kick a ball, throw objects, etc. just as well as or better than women with narrow hips and small breasts, they're not going to be as biomechanically efficient, so they're less likely to be sub-elite or elite than somebody with these characteristics. A simple way of saying this is that a straight up and down body is more efficient than a curvy one, and there's good reason to believe that there are more straight up and down men than women. This might lead to a situation where there's a 10-11% difference between the performance of top males and females but a 13-15% difference in performance between those who place, say, 500th or even 1000th in their sex category in a marathon.
This is very interesting. I'd never really thought about this way, but your idea about the distribution of body types makes a lot of sense.
As to the discussion about socialization, I do agree that it at least partially reflects innate interests that are different on average between the sexes. It's never only nature or nurture, the two are always correlated. My point was just that there are probably more women with relative talent who either were never pushed to develop it, or just weren't interested in sports.
A woman I know just broke 3 hours at Boston. She is 47 or 48 and didn't even run until she was well into adulthood. I wish she would have started younger because maybe she would have gotten an OTQ.
2:42 is 10% faster than 3:00, and that feels about right.
Participation rates of men and women are about equal, but there are a lot more men who actually train competitively. So just comparing the same finishing places will give you a skewed perspective.
this is not a good comparison. as performance gets higher the relative difficulty in getting every % gets harder too. it's basically just as easy for a male and female to run 6 hours, but by world class standards the difference is 10%. it's not a linear progression where the difference stays 10% for all standards forever. there is no way a female 2:42 is comparable to a 3:00, it's more like 2:50
The correct answer at the elite level is that 10% slower for women is the rule of thumb. This is true for all world records (10-11%).
For equivalents in more recreational levels, I would tend to add a bit more.
you think a 4 hour man is equivalent to a 5 hour woman? it's the opposite way round.
the slower you get, the further you are from physical potential, the easier it is to make gains for both sexes. ie the smaller the difference between males and females
i'd reckon around 2:47. women's running still hasn't caught up in depth to the mins. the womens world record marathon isn't going to be 2:14 for more that a year or so the way i see it. so it should lessen the divide bt the genders 10% rule. iirc the half marathon WR is a bit stronger than the marathon one.
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