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| Photo courtesy of Ezra Shaw/Getty Images |
"It's a pretty difficult sport with a high risk of injury," Arefyev said. "If a man gets a serious injury, it's still not fatal, but for women it could end much more seriously."
Even though both men and women can suffer injuries from competing in ski jumping, and Arefyev seems to be hinting at women being the weaker sex, this was not the statement that caused a reactionary response.
Arefyev continued: "If I had a daughter, I'd never let her jump — it's too much hard labor. Women have another purpose — to have children, to do housework, to create hearth and home."
David Epstein, author of The Sports Gene and contributing columnist for The Washington Post, remarked that although Arefyev's statement seems out of place in 2014, it is exactly his type of thinking about sex differences that has kept the women's ski jump event out of the Olympics until this year (compare that to men's ski jumping, which has been an event since the first Winter Games in 1924).
Epstein went on to compare men and women in a variety of other events:
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| Katherine Switer in the 1967 Boston Marathon. |
Women's middle- and long- distance running events were banned from the Olympics for 32 years (until 2008, when women once again competed in all the same events as men in track), due to a common misconception that running these distances would produce infertility and early aging in women. For example, Katherine Switzer, the first woman to complete the Boston Marathon (1967), was told her uterus would collapse.
After women were once again permitted to compete, there was a period of time when it was thought that they would continue improving at great rates as a collective group and eventually pass men's world records in various events. We now know what women's rate of improvement seems to have plateaued, while men are continuing to improve at a small rate.
Why the plateau? Is the long-standing idea that men are simply more suited for sports true? Will Betty Hutton's famous words "anything you can do I can do better," never come true for women athletes? Well, no.
It is true that men are generally heavier and typically have longer limbs, bigger hearts and lungs, less fat, denser bones and narrower hips than women, which lead to their more efficient running capabilities (on average they are 11% faster than women). However, these same differences serve in women's advantage in other events. Women are able to excel in the ski jump, for example, as they are typically lighter and able to fly further distances, and in long-distance swimming the gap between sexes closes, especially in colder waters where women's extra fat is able to keep them warm.
However, and perhaps most importantly, these physical differences between males and females do not emerge until after puberty (usually around the age of 10). Knowing this, there is no biological reason for separating boys and girls in sports in the early stages of their lives.
In her book Pink Brain, Blue Brain: How Small Differences Grow into Troublesome Gaps — and What We Can Do About It, Dr. Lise Eliot discusses how small biological differences between sexes get amplified into much larger differences in the adult years, and what we as society can do about it.
Eliot's topics range from intellectual capabilities (such as math and science scores and spatial reasoning skills) to preferences (for different toys, hobbies, etc.) and from verbal skills to physical traits. She states that gender identification usually occurs at the age of 2 on average, and this is when differences between the two sexes begins to be amplified.
As far as sports are concerned, Eliot remarks that co-ed sports can have an immense importance on children early in their life (before puberty); however, co-ed sports are not often promoted, even toddler sports teams are separated by gender.
Not only do co-ed teams encourage competition amongst females (a quality that becomes increasingly important later in life, as women begin to enter the work force and are beaten out by more-competitive males for higher positions), but it may also help facilitate cooperation skills amongst males.
The purpose of Eliot's book is not to say that there are no differences between sexes, just to make clear that these differences are very small early in life, and that there are things we (parents, teachers, peers, community members) can do to ensure that both sexes have equal opportunities in life.
As far as the Olympics are concerned, the recognition across athletes that men are better at certain events and women are better at others is vital, but it is also important to recognize that there are events in which the two sexes are able to compete on the same playing field, much like in life.
Seeing the Olympics as a small-scale version of the world and society's ever-lasting opinions on sex differences shows just how far we have come in understanding sex vs. gender differences, but also how far we have to go.
REFERENCES:
Eliot, Lise. Pink Brain, Blue Brain: How Small Differences Grow into Troublesome Gaps -- And What We Can Do About It. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2009. Print.
Epstein, David. "How Much Do Sex Differences Matter in Sports?" Washington Post. The Washington Post, 08 Feb. 2014. Web. 20 Feb. 2014. <http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/how-much-do-sex-differences-matter-in-sports/2014/02/07/563b86a4-8ed9-11e3-b227-12a45d109e03_story.html>.
Peters, Justin. "Women Are Built to Ski Jump. Could They Soar Past the Best Male Jumpers?" Slate Magazine. The Slate Group, 11 Feb. 2014. Web. 23 Feb. 2014. <http://www.slate.com/blogs/five_ring_circus/2014/02/11/women_s_ski_jumping_sochi_olympics_why_women_could_soar_past_men_in_the.html>.
After women were once again permitted to compete, there was a period of time when it was thought that they would continue improving at great rates as a collective group and eventually pass men's world records in various events. We now know what women's rate of improvement seems to have plateaued, while men are continuing to improve at a small rate.
Why the plateau? Is the long-standing idea that men are simply more suited for sports true? Will Betty Hutton's famous words "anything you can do I can do better," never come true for women athletes? Well, no.
It is true that men are generally heavier and typically have longer limbs, bigger hearts and lungs, less fat, denser bones and narrower hips than women, which lead to their more efficient running capabilities (on average they are 11% faster than women). However, these same differences serve in women's advantage in other events. Women are able to excel in the ski jump, for example, as they are typically lighter and able to fly further distances, and in long-distance swimming the gap between sexes closes, especially in colder waters where women's extra fat is able to keep them warm.
However, and perhaps most importantly, these physical differences between males and females do not emerge until after puberty (usually around the age of 10). Knowing this, there is no biological reason for separating boys and girls in sports in the early stages of their lives.
In her book Pink Brain, Blue Brain: How Small Differences Grow into Troublesome Gaps — and What We Can Do About It, Dr. Lise Eliot discusses how small biological differences between sexes get amplified into much larger differences in the adult years, and what we as society can do about it.
Eliot's topics range from intellectual capabilities (such as math and science scores and spatial reasoning skills) to preferences (for different toys, hobbies, etc.) and from verbal skills to physical traits. She states that gender identification usually occurs at the age of 2 on average, and this is when differences between the two sexes begins to be amplified.
As far as sports are concerned, Eliot remarks that co-ed sports can have an immense importance on children early in their life (before puberty); however, co-ed sports are not often promoted, even toddler sports teams are separated by gender.
Not only do co-ed teams encourage competition amongst females (a quality that becomes increasingly important later in life, as women begin to enter the work force and are beaten out by more-competitive males for higher positions), but it may also help facilitate cooperation skills amongst males.
The purpose of Eliot's book is not to say that there are no differences between sexes, just to make clear that these differences are very small early in life, and that there are things we (parents, teachers, peers, community members) can do to ensure that both sexes have equal opportunities in life.
As far as the Olympics are concerned, the recognition across athletes that men are better at certain events and women are better at others is vital, but it is also important to recognize that there are events in which the two sexes are able to compete on the same playing field, much like in life.
Seeing the Olympics as a small-scale version of the world and society's ever-lasting opinions on sex differences shows just how far we have come in understanding sex vs. gender differences, but also how far we have to go.
REFERENCES:
Eliot, Lise. Pink Brain, Blue Brain: How Small Differences Grow into Troublesome Gaps -- And What We Can Do About It. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2009. Print.
Epstein, David. "How Much Do Sex Differences Matter in Sports?" Washington Post. The Washington Post, 08 Feb. 2014. Web. 20 Feb. 2014. <http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/how-much-do-sex-differences-matter-in-sports/2014/02/07/563b86a4-8ed9-11e3-b227-12a45d109e03_story.html>.
Peters, Justin. "Women Are Built to Ski Jump. Could They Soar Past the Best Male Jumpers?" Slate Magazine. The Slate Group, 11 Feb. 2014. Web. 23 Feb. 2014. <http://www.slate.com/blogs/five_ring_circus/2014/02/11/women_s_ski_jumping_sochi_olympics_why_women_could_soar_past_men_in_the.html>.
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