Reader Rob forwarded
an article from the Boston Globe claiming that women are narrowing the performance gap that sits between them and men.
Every few years this idea gets going, that women are catching up with men. It's not really true. One of the fallacies it rests on is the statistical outlier. So when an article points to a 6' tall girl like golf prodigy Michelle Wie, who can drive better than 300-yards, you have to ask, how many women vs. men can drive 300+ yards? No one is arguing that
no women can equal male performance - the question is how many? Of hundreds of thousands (if not millions) of men who are interested in competitive basketball, only one reached the performance level of Michael Jordan - call it 1:500,000 odds. What are the odds of a woman reaching that level? I lack the stats knowledge to figure it, but it's got to be at least eight or ten times as rare. Also, the statistical outlier is often so obviously prone to be skilled in the sport that she (or he) is recruited to play, throwing off the odds of it occurring randomly - think Manut Bol. Perhaps Michelle Wie will be the sole woman to reach a level of skill that only several hundred men globally attain - but that will still be several hundred to one.
Take a look at track and field: in 1988, Florence Griffith Joyner shattered the women's record in the 100 meter, achieving a time of 10.49 seconds - cutting more than a quarter second off the previous record of 10.76. I believe the record still stands. For purposes of comparison, the
Nebraska high school boys track record is 10.5. That is to say, the fastest woman in the history of the world is only 1/100th of a second faster than the fastest high school boy in the history of Nebraska. Larger states like New York have significantly better times than Joyner's as the record for the boy's 100 meter. Ranked women's meets around the world usually see only a slight edge in 100 meter times over run of the mill high school boys' events. And need I add, upper body strength is a secondary factor in the sprints.
Women are not achieving physical equality with men. What is happening is that athletically talented women are finding appreciation and outlets for their abilities, and that notions of female frailty are gradually being cast aside. Physiology is the ultimate limiting factor, not culture.
