Why don't the women compete along with the men? All they've doing is holding a firearm or air rifle, and in some cases they don't even have to hold it up; they lie on the ground with the rifle steadied on a sandbag.
Maybe I'm missing something, but I can't think of any physical disadvantage that women would have in target shooting.
I thought sportswomen wanted to be taken seriously.
This is a recent development. The last time (1992) there was a mixed division (in the skeet discipline), a woman won (373/375).There is some talk of reviving "mixed" in 2020 (Tokyo).You can read some an opinion here.http://www.usashooting.org/news/2012/2/28/195-usa-shooting-viewpoint--men-vs-women-in-competitive-shooting
Entry • 1894: At the Paris Congress held in June, the desire was expressed for shooting to be on the Olympic programme.
Withdrawal • 1925: At the Olympic Congress held in Prague in June, the programme of the Games of the IX Olympiad in Amsterdam in 1928, was discussed and adopted. Shooting was removed. (returned in 1932)
• 1967: At the 66 IOC Session held in May in Teheran, it was decided that the International Shooting Union could include women in Olympic shooting teams.
• 1979: Women's events At the 81 IOC Session held in April in Montevideo, it was decided to events add three separate events for women.
• 1980: At the 83 IOC Session held in July and August in Moscow, the choice of three women’s events was approved. In addition, it was decided that the trap and skeet events would remain mixed.
• Separation of the men’s and women’s programme
1991: At the IOC Executive Board meeting held in December in Lausanne, the Federation’s proposal to replace the mixed trap and skeet events with men’s and women’s events was approved. The addition of a new event (double trap) was also approved
1968: 7 events (men’s) In Mexico in 1968, three women competed in two men’s events: two in the small bore rifle prone event and one in the skeet event.
1972: 8 events (mixed)
1976-1980: 7 events (mixed)
1984: 11 events (6 men’s, 3 women’s, 2 mixed)
1988-1992: 13 events (7 men’s, 4 women’s, 2 mixed)
1996: 15 events (10 men’s, 5 women’s)
2000-2004: 17 events (10 men’s, 7 women’s)
2008-2016: 15 events (9 men’s, 6 women’s)
The main argument for it, is that more women compete this way. Otherwise by self-selection (though not skill-selection), there is about a 90-10% (?) split in participation and interest, skewing the balance.
Thanks. I see that archery also separates the sexes, for no good reason that I know of, so it must be done to encourage women's participation.
Women want equality... unless there aren't enough of them, then they want affirmative action
I think archery has a strength-based component in applying tension (it is also timed, so you have to apply strength in a limited time interval), though I don't know how much the male/female difference really is. Women's archery (1904) was actually one of the first sports for women in the Olympics (no one but USA competed), though it missed 50+ years from 1920-1972 due to lack of standard rules.
In 1972, the male winner had 2528, while four females had over 2400, and the best would have finished 8th overall. In 1984, the best male was 2616, the second best was 2564, and a woman had 2568. In 1980, two Soviet women beat all the male scores. Since then, they have a qualifying round with scoring (which are somewhat comparable), and then KOs.
1 post was removed from this page.