Fair our foul: Race directors of race that was 81% male last yr. are mandating that the 2020 race be exactly 50-50 male/female.

Sounds like there is nothing stopping more females from signing up before. Most Ultra's are male heavy. As normal with these discrepancies its simply personal preference

I'm not familiar with the ultra community and typical male/female ratios. However, most road races (5K to marathon) I compete in usually have a slightly higher number of women than men. When I first started competing in the mid-80s, races were mostly men. In the last 10 years or so it seems like women have taken over in sheer numbers. The men's field is always deeper and more competitive at the top while there are lots more "hobby jogger" and walker females.

Have they considered the possibility that maybe less women are interested in running 100 miles and a lottery is NOT going to give them 58 men and 58 women to equal this year's field size? They'll end up with 22 females and 22 males since these are the only women interested in running it. Net result is 72 less men and a race that will not see its fourth running.

What's next, implementing race quotas? If they want a true representation of America then they need to base it on all characteristics. RIDICULOUS!

I'm pretty much completely in agreement with what's said here. I am a female runner who also started competing in the mid-80s. I am also a university professor (i.e. I live in a bastion of political correctness) and my politics are, in general, left of center. But I also believe it's ridiculous to mandate that participation in everything must exactly track the demographics of the U.S. population.

Maybe women just don't want to do ultras as much as men? The inequality is not wrong, it's just down to interest levels. Anyone can sign up, no one's oppressing anyone, I don't know why everything has to be dead even. Some groups like to do some things more than others.

soccerxc wrote:

Maybe women just don't want to do ultras as much as men? The inequality is not wrong, it's just down to interest levels. Anyone can sign up, no one's oppressing anyone, I don't know why everything has to be dead even. Some groups like to do some things more than others.

this--agree with others-I started racing also in the mid 80's-road races then were generally 80% males, as opposed to more than 50% female at present for 5k/10k/half's etc...ultras still seem to be the one distance still primarily male; Though it is has been great seeing running becoming more inclusive in the past 35 years or so, we should avoid forcing trends to achieve an ideal/artificial equal...

soccerxc wrote:

Maybe women just don't want to do ultras as much as men? The inequality is not wrong, it's just down to interest levels. Anyone can sign up, no one's oppressing anyone, I don't know why everything has to be dead even. Some groups like to do some things more than others.

I agree with you but I imagine the RD talks about perpetuating "a system that prevents women from participating at equal levels". So I"m trying to imagine what he means by that.

I bet he would say that women aren't as interested in part because they don't have time to train due to a lack of nationalized child-care. Even working moms do more childcare/house-work than men.

One other thing that might depress a women's desire to do a 100 miler is how much longer it takes a woman to do the race. If you think running a 100 mile race is hard, imagine being out their for the equivalent of 110 or 112 (based on how the average woman is slower by 10-12 %).

Which ties in with another point - most of the people training for these things are probably pretty well off financially. Who has hours to spend training if they are struggling to make ends meet? Since women make less than men on average, finances may be a factor.

Perhaps we should just interview the race director.

But this equal numbers stuff ignores a very key point which many 'feminists' don't like to admit - people are different based on genetics - period. There are something like only 5 million Kalenjin in the world out of 7.7 billion people. That's like .06% of the world's population right? Yet NPR says they took 40% of the biggest awards in running between 1987 and 1996. What should race directors be doing to stop the "system" the enables them do sign up and dominate these races at a clip that is 666.66 higher than expected ( 40/.06 is 666.6666)?

I agree as well. Unless I hear more I think this is ridiculous. It's great to think about how to enact positive change, but sometimes in trying to do good people just do something, whether it's best in the long run (no pun intended) or not. (My guess is that this person is actually trying this partly for publicity, but I could be wrong.)

I work in education--teach high school and coach. The teachers at my school are pretty evenly split, though the English department is female dominated the science department has more men. The custodial and janitorial staff is mostly men, (I doubt it's mostly because women want those jobs but can't get them) but go to the office and there's one assistant principal (of 3) who is male and everyone else in the whole office is female. I've been there 8 years, never more than 1 man in the office. District office? Maybe 5% men. Nearly all the highest-paying jobs are women. Elementary schools? Very few men. Is this gender inequality toward men? Should we demand 50/50? No, not in general. (Although I DID have a female colleague who said her husband wasn't hired as an elementary school teacher and was basically told to try middle school. She said it was 100% because he was a man.)

Men and women have general differences and that's okay. There is a LOT of overlap. Women can love cars, sports, beer, etc., and men throughout the ages have painted, composed music, done theater, cooked, etc. Yeah, that's partly because we've been trained to like certain things, but in general there are differences--across the world and over time. And some of that is simply because women have babies and can nurse them. And some (if people have forgot), actually WANT to stay home with their newborns instead of building their career.

In high school I worked for a youth-employment program. People called with odd jobs and kids had their name on file and got jobs. I didn't get called very often, but EVERY job I got I thought, "They'd NEVER give this job to a girl." I wiped cigarette smoke of the top of an apartment's walls and crawled behind a refrigerator to clean all the spider webs. I trimmed a tree that oozed that "sap" that looks like white glue, which dripped all over me. There were times I thought, "Can't I just babysit some 7 year old and feed them chicken nuggets and watch Toy Story with them or something?" But such is life. People needed nasty stuff done, and I could do it. Some girl got off easier and got paid more simply because she was a girl and I was a guy. I'm asked to kill the spiders and bugs in our home. In some ways it isn't fair, but I consider it service and chivalry.

This is already too long, but I could also tell you about how Title IX compliance hurt our women's distance team. Coaches basically told the ladies to find other ladies to join the team, but never race, to pad the numbers so not as many guys would have to be cut to meet the 50/50 they were trying to achieve. It ended up watering down their team, which they hated. They went D1 for a reason. This isn't really Title IX's fault, but an instance of how one wide-sweeping rule isn't really best if not thought out well.

The short answer is YES (they have indeed considered the possibility that less females may be interested, and it is their goal to change that over time).

Please note this subject already came up a couple weeks back on Ultra Runner Podcast (Eric Schranz), and many of the same comments/concerns were voiced. However, I followed the race website link Eric posted and read the fine print of the new lottery rules that are going into effect (clip):

Gender Equity Policy

• Entry spots will be evenly split between male and female genders, creating two “pools” each

comprised of 50% of our entrant cap (as determined by our permitting agencies). In the event of

an odd number of entrant cap, each pool will be rounded down to the lowest whole number.

• Entrants will apply to their respective gender’s pool during the lottery application window and

the same lottery selection process (yet to be finalized) will apply to both.

• If the number of applicants in a pool is less than the number of the pool’s allocated spots, the

additional spots will be given to the other pool.

• Should neither pool receive enough applicants to fill their allocated spots, the remaining spots

will be opened for general registration with no restrictions on the basis of gender.

• Transgender or non-binary applicants will apply to the appropriate pool as defined by our

transgender/non-binary policy.

Currently, the race limit is set to be 124 (62/62 split for M/F lotteries), with up to an additional 14 discretionary race director picks (elites or whatever). So the bottom line is, if only 19 females even apply for the lottery, an additional 43 spots will be available in the male's lottery. This seems a whole lot more reasonable than what all the clickbait headlines are reporting - details matter.

(Note: I won't go into the transgender policy as it's an entirely different subject and one I'm not qualified to discuss).

It's a private event so they can make their own rules. If equality and fairness to them means 50/50 male to female ratio then that's their right. It wasn't so long ago that professional sports leagues excluded players just because they weren't white.

tl;dr In order to promote inclusion™ we need to create a waitlist to exclude some people

To the point

https://youtu.be/NzwLrSdqDgM

Disclosure: I have read none of the responses yet so as not to bias my thoughts by the commentary.

My initial reaction is you will get 44** +/- competitors in the next race. Over time, assuming the principles of capitalism hold and there isn't some magnanimous backer who props up the race regardless of a lack of profitability, the race will be forced out of the marketplace because it is artificially excluding willing participants, and there are plenty of alternative races to attend for the males who are excluded. So, in the spirit of preserving as free a society as possible, my inclination is to call it 'fair' as long as the race director doesn't mind discontinuing if they fail financially.

**They might see an initial bump in attendance the first year they do this just from the novelty factor and publicity, but my prediction is that will taper back to where they started over a year or two.

If this is a true lottery, maybe what makes more sense is to keep the proportion of those that enter with those that are chosen. For example, if the lottery entrances are 75% men and 25% women, then ensure that lots are picked in the same way.

Though I have to admit, trolling them at their own game sounds fun. What if every guy declares they identify as female? They care about gender equality, can they discriminate against picking your own gender?

Bottom line: The race directors want attention and want to seem "modern", but instead they seem ignorant and poorly thought out.

Did the race cap at participation to 106 last year? That's a weird number. The race can do what it wants, but it looks like with this system, it will have about 50 competitors in its next itteration.

hobbyJogger01 wrote:

Disclosure: I have read none of the responses yet so as not to bias my thoughts by the commentary.

My initial reaction is you will get 44** +/- competitors in the next race.

You should have.

The way this has been described, where the mandated 50/50 split will not be used to reduce the field size, is a bit more reasonable.

My opinion on this policy depends a lot on what exactly the RD is trying to achieve. A lot of policies like this (essentially an affirmative action policy) are really more about aesthetics. An organization doesn't like the way it looks when it isn't diverse enough, so it adopts very blunt policies to make it look better. But to the extent that there's an injustice causing the lack of diversity, it's rarely on the back end. It's not like most races are adopting policies that make it hard for women to participate (though if they are, then shame on them, and they should change). It's almost typically broader social issues that cause fewer people to register (or apply for particular jobs, etc.).

Now, it sounds like the RD here is adopting this policy not because he thinks that ultraraces have discriminatory policies or because it's the only fair way to run a race, but as a form of political protest regarding whatever social issues lead to lower female representation in these races. I may not agree with his assessment of the social situation, but I can at least respect that he's entitled to try to make a statement. It's much more honest than the kind of covert shenanigans that a lot of organizations engage in to make their demographics look better, without any real engagement with the causes of the disparity.

As an aside, I'll note that people only seem to care about these disparities with regard to good things. For instance, I recently heard a podcast arguing that truancy should not be criminalized because it "disproportionately" affects girls in that 40% of people arrested for truancy are female! Apparently it would only be fair if the numbers tracked the proportion of women who make up the adult prison population, which is of course much smaller.

1 - who knows

2 - Ultra's are mostly an old person sport, ie their kids are at an age that they can take care of themselves. And again if this was a cause we would see it in shorter races as well. I couldn't quite tell by looking at some shorter trail race results in my area but I'd guess that sub 20 mile trail races are also skewed male.

3 - Most ultras are not the round numbers you would think they are, JFK 50 is 50.8 and that's fairly close for an ultra. So in general adding 5 or so miles to a 100 miler isn't that rare, plus it's really not that bad to slog through another hour or two once your 10-20 hours in. Conditions (weather, type of trail) will make an ultra up to 25%(to 40%?) slower or faster just depending on the weather or course conditions, so the 10% is definitely tougher for women but not totally unreasonable.

4 - The average 20 minute 5ker trains more than the typical ultra runner. I highly doubt the discrepancy is due to finances, I would say at the typical ultra the average income of the participants is less than the typical road race once you account for age. I doubt people struggling to make ends meet run road races either and you don't see the gender difference.

We can have equality of opportunity, or equality of outcome. You can only have one.

If you want equality of opportunity, well some groups are not going to be represented equally according to what % of the population they make up.

If you want equality of outcome, you have to infringe upon equality of opportunity to achieve it. You have to willingly discriminate against some groups to promote other groups on the basis of gender, race, etc.

Today it’s unusual or even unique. In 20 years, everyone will claim it was their idea.

Thanks btw; will tell wife.