Designing sports for women.

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But the thing is that....humans are not gorillas or seals, the physical gap isn't huge.
There are a some men who are innately physically weaker than a lot of women, and some women who are innately physically stronger than a lot of men.

And those some aren't few.

So how would this be fair on individual basis?

So let's say a woman X and a man Y have exactly the same body strength/muscle-mass/endurance/height/weight - and they play the same sport.
But with your idea, the new "female version" of this sport, let's say Pole Jumping, made the bar's height shorter for example.

X beats Y's champ record, and now she's the best pole jumper - would that be fair for Y?
Y has the same physical attributes of X but he has a harder challenge now with this new design.
That design would make sense if t he weakest men are innately stronger than all women, but it's not the case...as I said, we are not gorillas, the gap isn't that huge.


You know, in sports like boxing, there's categorization per weight, the way boxing is designed makes it more fair than a lot of sports.
To make it fair for both women and men, then most sports would have to be categorized by height/weight/bodyframe/etc regardless of gender -and women and men compete each other in the same sport within the same height/weight group category.
So in the same pool, you would have female and male swimmers of the same height/weight/bodyframe/etc category, and the best gets the gold medal.

The title is "Designing Sports For Women". As it's unnecessary to design sports that already exist.....yeah.

I don't think sports are really designed for men but rather insomuch the biggest/strongest/fastest/etc which is typically men obviously, I have hard time designing a sport with a leveled playing field while still being a sport.

FWIW, I enjoy women's athletics. I like the WNBA despite all the flack it gets, I'm lucky as I've had the pleasure of watching Diana Taurasi and Brittney Griner win a championship here. There is value in women's sport even if they can't match the physicality of the men, I think a big part of the problem is simply marketing as this WNBA team here unlike some found a base to draw support from which is the LGBTQ community and I would these fans are as passionate as any NBA fans altho maybe not selling out 20k every night but why do they have to? If I were so blessed to have a daughter, I think it would be a great thing to get a kid into but maybe that's just because I feel like I can relate to it with my own special interests. You have to market the sport in a way that doesn't compete against men's sports since that comparison is the issue, you have to find your own base of support.

WMMA is really interesting as it usually takes place on alongside men as various weightclasses and they're not thought of as any lesser competitors or anything like that, Ronda Rousey was the biggest star in the UFC until she got knocked out. I would say I would rather a random women's fight in the UFC than a random guy one, the female fighters are more interesting and honestly almost always come to fight. Part of what is neat with WMMA is that it is so young compared to it's male counterpart so the skillsets these women have are more like the early UFC rather than now where everybody is a master of everything so you have very specialized fighters which are the most exciting to see. Ronda Rousey was a Bronze medalist in judo in Beijing and finished like all here fights with in a couple minutes in the first round by arm bar, Cris Cyborg isn't as familiar to UFC fans but she tears thru her opponents like Mike Tyson so it's understandable why Ronda didn't want to fight her but too bad as that would of been one of the biggest MMA fights ever let alone WMMA but it's all for naught now as Rondo got herself knocked out in her last fight. I'd still like to see it happen regardless, the dominant grappler versus the dominant striker is classic MMA.

There is overlap, but pound for pound, men are stronger than women. The top female competitive body builders posses about 75% of the strength of the top male competitive body builders. From that, it would seem like that the gap is small, but in every day life, if a woman exercises at all, she will most often avoid exercises she fears will make her bulk up, such as strength building weight exercises, and focus on slimming exercises such as cardio, while men, if they work out, tend to focus almost entirely on exercises that will help them bulk up and build strength, such as free weights.

So among the general population, the gap is wider than 25%, and your average man often possess significantly more upper body strength than your average woman.

Testosterone not only builds muscle, but also increases risk taking and agility. I was watching two men play a ball game in an enclosed court once, and there were two women playing the same ball game in the enclosed court next to them, and the men played as if the walls weren't there, occasionally slamming into them, and the women played as if the walls would kill them if they touched them, and would forfeit the ball in favor of not hitting the wall.

But regardless of strength differences among the sexes, most sports are sex segregated and I don't see any reason a reason to design a sport that women would naturally excel at over men. I think people should appreciate athletes for their performance in their respective categories.

I enjoy watching both men's and women's sports. Seeing them performing at the best of their abilities, regardless of gender, is what makes it exciting for me. I think athletes mostly compete against themselves.

One sport that could include both genders is diving. The skills seem to be pretty much the same.

Extreme bodybuilding isn't much useful for sports and especially for Olympic sports....it's only for vain bodybuilding.

Most athletes are naturally muscled, and I don't see female athletes care much if they look naturally muscled, there are plenty of (naturally) muscled athletes in the Olympics.



Sure, for the general population, some of the gap you're talking about may be also culturally/socially driven (ie. women discouraged socially to look muscly).


But I am sure if they can measure the "Overall strength" of both sexes among the professional athletes, the two bell curves would overlap a lot with the male bell curve only shifted slightly to the right.



Maybe, but courage and risk taking may also be socially influenced - boys are encouraged to be fearless.


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Such sports already exist, like equestrian sports, shooting sports, figure skating and some gymnastics.

I'm not sure how much that generalization holds up for aspie females, as there seems to be a correlation between Aspergers and motor clumsiness. I for one certainly lack those physical capabilities.

But this thread might very well be about all women in general, not particularly ASD females, and if so, scratch what I just said.

Going on what OP posted, maybe archery would fit a lot of women?
Or an obstacle course where flexibility and balance was important in order to get through it?

In a science fiction story I thought up years ago, I invented a sports called magnet ball. It was a team sport where you had a sort of wand that you had to catch a magnetic ball with. Each team wanted to lead the ball to the opponents' side and score. Although magnetic, the ball was larger than the tip of the wand, so despite the magnetic pull, you still had to balance it, and the other team could use the repelling end of the wand to try to make you lose the ball. In my mind it was a fun and hard game to play. If it existed, it would make use of the physical capabilities the majority of women have.

heh, personally (and that's just me) I always hated all of those things. the only thing I remotely liked in PE was chasing games and ball sports. I wasn't good at them either, but at least they could be fun.

I think it is better to design a sport with built in challenges. So in that sense I don't see any problem with women playing the traditional male sports as they will be competing with each other as is. They make the choice to do it.

On the other hand I get the point of designing sports women might be more interested in.

Yes sports can change rules to try and include the capabilities of more people. However, part of sport is see who can train physically and mentally to meet the demand of the sports, so I'm not always in favour of this. That is the point of professionals they aren't your average joe or jane.

It is always going to be a compromise thought the more niche the challenges, the less interest there will be in the sport. There need to be some grass roots interest, which mean people need to be able to play it on a basic level, but have enough of challenge at a professional level. The spectacle of the challenge is also to make it enjoyable for spectators.

Last edited by 0_equals_true on 30 Aug 2016, 2:39 pm, edited 2 times in total.

In the UK the sports that were associated as women's sports were netball and rounders.

Netball was specially designed by a women, based on basketball to be suitable for women.

Netball is played at a high level and is enjoyable to watch.

Rounders is a bit like baseball/softball. I don't think this is played much outside schools, if it is still being played these days. It is quite bit older than baseball, and may have been played by men more to start with.

However the point about these sports is there is nothing really that makes them more female compatible other than the association the have with women, and the infrastructure and bodies evolved. Women can play basketball, baseball and softball just fine. These are only variants of the same types of sports.

Yes originally they may have used to accommodate standards of femininity of the day and general capabilities. However as they have evolved, especially in the case of netball it is really about athleticism, quick thinking, speed and some strength.

Although netball doesn't have the same dribbling of basketball. The restrictions actually make for and interesting variant of basketball, with different sorts of decision making and plays. It is not a replacement or substitute for women's basketball, just a different game.

Handball and volleyball, works well for both men and women. Most ball related sports work well in fact.

Field hockey in the UK has long been associated with both male and females.

Age is a factor. You want to get people into sports early.

Under 11s boys and girls can play rugby together.



Not later. but hell I would not go against the New Zealand women's team