Sport

In sports, what exactly do gender divisions accomplish? Why shouldn't women simply compete with men?

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The idea behind many sporting competitions is to equalize the physical attributes of the competitors as much as possible, so that skill can be the deciding factor. This is why there are weight classes in wrestling and boxing, and handicapping in horse racing and in golf. Since women are, on average, physically different from men in lots of ways that are relevant to lots of sports -- e.g, tennis, basketball, track & field events -- it has seemed reasonable to separate men and women into separate competition classes for those sports. Automobile racing doesn't implicate physical skills that vary systematically between men and women, so there are no gender divisions there.

There are also some fairness considerations: using classes within sports gives more people the opportunity to play. If there were no classes, then men who currently box in lightweight divisions would nearly always lose, and sports like basketball and track & field, even at the high school level, would be virtually devoid of women.

But of course the main priniciple -- achieving physical parity among the competitors -- is very imperfectly implemented. Some sports have only male and female classes, but make no allowances for large physical differences within those classes. So -- women are, on average, shorter than men, but there are no "height classes" within basketball. This leads to a new problem about fairness. A man who is "only" 5'8" would be at a serious competitive disadvantage on a college men's basketball team (if he even made the team), but could possibly excel on a women's basketball team.Theoretically speaking, the ideal solution would be to come up with a larger number of classes, based on detailed physical characteristics -- Body Mass Indices, location of muscles, flexibility, pelvic characteristics (this affects gait, and so has implications for how fast women can run relative to men), etc. -- and then assign individuals to these categories regardless of their sex. There might still be significant gender segregation on this plan, but it would be a consequence of a more principled classification. Practically speaking, though, such a system is unlikely to happen, both because of the difficulty of constructing such a system, and because of historical and cultural inertia.

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