Should we stop splitting sports by gender and just let everybody compete together?
Should we stop splitting sports by gender and just let everybody compete together?
No more men's and women's league, no more "gender eligibility" requirements, a common dresscode, same standards and rules for all.
Edit: since it looks like people missing the word let: the suggestion isn't to force desegregation. It's to allow it or even make it the default. Someone else made a good suggestion: segregate by attributes specific to the sport. In boxing it's weight class, in basketball it could be height, in biking it could even be doped and non doped. Sex and gender need not be the very first thing to segregate by.
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A heavyweight boxer isn't the same for both sexes. If you mean coupling heavyweight against featherweight of the other gender or something similar to compensate, it could work but would probably be seen as unfair, it would be hard to draw the line on where it's equivalent.
I do think it would be interesting to have mixed team sports where a certain number of each gender needs to be on each side, but it would probably end up with positions always being relegated to the same sex.
The definitions aren't the same, but that can be fixed: heavyweight = over 90kg, whichever gender (right now it's 91kg for men and 79 kg for women). They'd compete against each other in the same weight class by actual weight, not name of class.
You could then have multiple scenarios:
- few women in heavyweight
- no women in heavyweight
- women within the top of 70-75kg (for example)
- no women within the top 70-75kg (for example)
But we won't know until we try.
The problem is that a man in the same weight class as a women would still wipe the floor with them.
I doubt even a heavy weight women against a featherweight man would be fair. Every category would be dominated by men.