What Sports Allow Women To Compete With Men?
Whilst there are plenty of idiotic, sexist men who will regularly choose to air their moronic opinions on platforms such as social media, most people are aware that women are just as capable as men when it comes to competing in various sports.
When the England women team won the European Championship in 2022, for example, achieving it before the men’s team had won the same competition, more than 365 million people watched the final around the world. There is no question that women are more than capable sports personalities across the board.
Even so, we live in a world where women are kept separate from men in all but a few of the most select sports. Women are able to compete on a level playing field with men in darts, for example, as well as horse racing. There are also Olympic sports where men and women face each other equally. In other instances, such as Formula One racing, women could technically compete alongside their male counterparts, even if that isn’t actually what happens in the real world. Women are well represented in plenty of different sports, but which are the ones where they’re taking the fight to men?
Horse Racing
There is perhaps no sport better placed to demonstrate the manner in which women can compete equally with men quite like horse racing. When it comes to racing horses, the animals do most of the hard work and it is the guidance that they are offered by the jockeys that can make the difference between a horse coming first or coming last. As a result, there is nothing that men can offer as jockeys that can’t also be offered by women, with the number of opportunities offered to men being the major difference between the sexes.
In March of 2022, the University of Nottingham released a report that confirmed that the gender of the jockey has no impact on the performance of a horse. The issue, it suggested, was that 90% of the jockeys operating in the industry were male. This meant that trainers and owners had far more men to choose from when picking their riders than women. Four years earlier, Vanessa Cashmore carried out research into racing and looked at more than one million rides in handicap events, discovering that men are given better horses to ride than women.
This can be seen in the success of Rachael Blackmore, the Irish jockey who became the first female to win the Grand National. She was also the first woman jockey to win the Leading Jockey award at the Cheltenham Festival and also the first female to win the Cheltenham Gold Cup. This was, of course, due to her talent, but other female jockeys might also have enjoyed similar success in the sport had they been given the same opportunities, given the fact that women and men are able to compete on an even playing field with one another when racing horses.
It isn’t just horse racing in the equestrian world where men and woman can compete equally, either. According to the International Equestrian Federation, two-thirds of the athletes in its database are women. The likes of dressage, show jumping and eventing are all events that women and men can compete in equally, which they often do during the likes of the Summer Olympics. There is nothing that sees the competitors split according to their gender, which is why it is all but impossible to ignore it as a sport when it comes to men and women being treated as equals.
Darts
Sven Mandel, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
In theory, there is nothing to stop men and women from competing on a level playing field when it comes to darts. In essence, any sport that is less about physicality and more about skill is one that can see the participants take each other on equally without any cause to think about their gender. Why would a man be better at throwing a dart at a board than a women? The answer, as with so many other sports, is not about the actual ability of the people taking part but is instead down to the number of opportunities that they’re presented with.
Thought darts is a sport that offers a Women’s Series specifically, it is also one in which at least a few women have been able to compete against the men in the main competition. In 2019, for example, Farron Sherrock made history when she became the first female darts player to win a match at the PDC World Championship. She then doubled down on that by winning another match, first defeating Ted Evetts and then beating Mensur Suljović, earning her the nickname ‘The Queen of the Palace’, owing to the fact that the event is played at Alexandra Palace.
Fewer women play darts than men, meaning that the chance of their skill being developed is limited. When it comes to the World Championship, the Professional Darts Corporation offers just two positions in the tournament to female darts players, which is just 2.08% of the 96 positions open to the tournament in general. If only 2% of competitors are allowed to be women, what chance has a women got of making a genuine impact on the sport moving forward? There is no reason why this should be the case, other than the age old problem of chauvinism.
Formula One
In the world of Formula One, there have been some women that have competed with the men on a level playing field over the years. Since the very start of the sport, women have been involved at numerous different levels. As with horse racing, there is no reason why a female driver couldn’t be just as successful as a male one if given the same opportunities. The car doesn’t care about the gender of the person that is driving it, which is why women are often used as the test driver for teams that have cars on the F1 grid around the world.
Of course, representation matters. That very few women have ever actually made it as far as sitting alongside their male counterparts on the grid means that there won’t be many girls decided to head off to their go-karting track in order to get involved in the races there. This means that there are as many girls as boys getting involved in the early stages of racing as a career, which in turn means that companies are much less likely to be willing to sponsor female drivers than male ones. Given the importance of money in Formula One, this can be a killer to ambition.
In November of 2022, F1 announced that there was to be an all female category called the F1 Academy, which was designed specifically to encourage more female drivers. Formula One confirmed that it would subsidise the teams with a budget of €150,000 each, meaning that the lack of sponsorship wouldn’t be a limiting factor to female drivers. The hope was that the new category would encourage girls to get into racing from a young age, with the long term aim being that there would be more women taking to the tracks and getting on the grid.
Golf
As with horse racing and Formula One, golf is sport in which the physicality of the player isn’t quite as important as their skill. Whilst male golfers are generally able to hit the ball further than their female counterparts, it would be untrue to suggest that female golfers are unable to be in the mix with the men at the business end of a tournament. This was demonstrated by Babe Didrikson Zaharias, who compete in seven Professional Golf Association events in 1945, making the cut in both the Phoenix Open and the Tucson Open.
Other names like Annika Sorenstam and Suzy Whaley will be well known to golf fans. Michelle Wie is another golfer who became famous thanks to her exploits on the male tour. Thanks to sponsorship exemptions, she took place in 13 men’s golf events, including eight PGA Tour events. She made the cut in the Asian SK Telecom Open, missing it in the rest of the events she played in. In 2018, Brittany Lincicome played in the Barbasol Championship, shooting six over par and finishing in 129th position, meaning that she was better than three of the men in the 132 player field.
Mixed Events
Bo Mertz, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons
There are several sports in which men and women compete in mixed situations.
Tennis
In tennis, for example, it is common for mixed doubles events to take place during the big tournaments. The reality of tennis is such that it is all but impossible for women to compete with men in the singles championships, as demonstrated by the fact there have been three Battle Of The Sexes events and the female player has only won one of them. Bobby Riggs defeated Margaret Court 6 – 2, 6 – 1, whilst Martina Navratilova lost 7 – 5, 6 – 2 to Jimmy Connors.
As a result, it is much more common for female players to compete alongside men in tennis, taking on other teams that are made up of both men and women in order to ensure that the playing field is about as level as it’s possible for it to be. This presents the players with the opportunity to prove that they are as good as their male counterparts, albeit in an environment wherein there is the ‘safety blanket’ of a male player alongside them. Does that mean that it is a sport in which men and women compete equally? That is obviously a matter for debate.
Badminton
As with tennis, badminton is a sport that offers male and female players the opportunity to play alongside one another. Just as the two sexes play together in mixed matches, the same is true in badminton. These mixed doubles matches allow men and women to play against one another, but once again the ‘safety net’ of the male tennis players being involved ensures that it isn’t in a head to head format. Badminton is obviously a physical sport, but the nature of using a shuttlecock means that it easier for the two sexes to compete equally.
That being said, the speed and power that a man is able to boast in comparison to a female counterpart does mean that they would have an advantage if the two went up against one another directly. There is anecdotal evidence that women badminton players are often out played by men, but this could just as easily be to do with the number of male players of the sport compared to female players as anything to do with the actual ability of people from either sex to compete against each other in a way that would be considered to be fair.
Winter Sports
Anyone that knows anything about the Winter Olympics will know of the names of Torvill and Dean. When the competed together over the gold medal in 1984, it was one of the most watched events in the history of the Olympics. Ice skating is a good example of a sporting discipline in which the male and female participants compete with each other equally, such is the team nature of numerous different disciplines. Dancing on ice is obviously something that both sexes can do equally, with no advantage being present because of the gender of a participant.
Luge might not seem like a sport that typically lends itself to mixed teams, but is actually the case. The traditional version of the luge at the Winter Olympics said that men and women could compete alongside each other, though in reality it was the case that most of the teams were made up of men. As a result, a decision was taken in 2014 to replace the doubles event with a mixed relay, requiring an equal number of both men and women to be featured on the teams. As a result, it is a truly equal sport in terms of the gender of participants.
