The
Gender Gap: Women are getting slower; men are
getting faster?
By Owen Anderson for peak
performance
That's
the controversial contention made by exercise
scientist Stephen Seiler and writer Steven Sailer in
the May-June edition of the internet publication
Sportscience News (http: //www.sportsci.org/news/news9705/gengap.html).
The relative slow-down in female performances
carefully documented by Seiler and Sailer is a true
shock to observers of sport and the general public,
since it has been widely believed that the
performance gap between the sexes is actually
narrowing, not broadening.
The belief that women were catching up with men has
steadily gained strength over the past two decades
as the ranks of professional female athletes
broadened; it got a big boost five years ago when a
scientific paper published in the prestigious
scientific journal Nature showed that women runners
were improving their performances much faster than
men.
In that paper ('Will Women Soon Outrun Men? Nature,
vol. 355, p. 25, 1992), written by University of
California at Los Angeles researchers Brian Whipp
and Susan Ward, the progression of world-record
running speeds at various distances for men and
women was plotted between the years 1900 and 1992.
These plots showed clearly that men and women had
been increasing world-record speeds at all standard
Olympic distances in a steady, linear fashion since
the turn of the century. Remarkably enough, the rate
of increase turned out to be constant within each
sex over a fairly wide range of distances - from 200
metres all the way up to 10 kilometres (e.g., 10-K
runners were speeding up just as much as 200-metre
sprinters).
Whipp (a former world-champion decathlete) and Ward
noted that the rate of increase in speed was much
greater over very long distances: Marathoners were
speeding up much more, compared to competitors at
shorter distances. However, their most intriguing
finding was that women were increasing their speeds
to a much greater extent than men.
For example, Whipp and Ward found that world-record
pace for men, at distances ranging from 200m up to
10,000m, was increasing by about 5.7 to 7.6 metres
per minute each decade. In contrast, women were
getting faster at more than double the men's rate -
from 14 to 18 metres per minute each 10 years.
As mentioned, marathon improvement was considerably
greater - around 9.2 metres per minute per decade
for the men (compared with 5.7 to 7.6 over shorter
distances). However, female marathoners were making
astounding progress, quickening their running
velocity at more than FOUR times the men's rate with
an upturn of 37.8 metres per minute per decade. It
was clear that women were 'catching up' with men at
a remarkable speed, especially in the marathon.
Women posing as men!
In a bit of reckoning which subsequently stirred up
a storm of controversy, Whipp and Ward projected the
male-female rates of increase into the future to
determine a possible timetable for sexual equality
in performance. Their numbers indicated that female
marathoners would run as fast as males in 1998 (!)
and would catch men at the other Olympic distances
sometime between the years 2015 and 2050!
Follow-up
analysis of Whipp and Ward's work revealed some of
the pitfalls associated with their extrapolations.
For example, the rates of increase detected by the
two scientists - if held constant - would mean that
in the year 2050 internationally elite women would
run the marathon at a greater speed than world-class
men would sustain in their 800-metre races!
Sarcastic analysts of Whipp and Ward's findings
predicted that women would disguise themselves as
men in 21st-century Olympic competitions in order to
increase their chances of winning medals.
Despite
such gibes, the belief in gender equity has
continued to strengthen since Whipp's paper
appeared. A large portion of the public now believes
that males and females will eventually compete
against each other directly for medals and prizes in
important competitions, and a poll taken last year
by U.S.News and World Report (July 22, 1996) found
that 66 per cent of Americans believe that 'the day
is coming when top female athletes will beat top
males at the highest competitive levels'.
Such a rosy view of female athletic efforts is far
different from the one portrayed by Seiler and
Sailer. They acknowledge that women's performances
have been moving closer to those of men throughout
most of the past century, but they contend that the
steep improvement curve for women has suddenly
flattened out, and that females are now beginning to
fall further behind men, instead of catching up.
Why
do they make such a claim? As Seiler and Sailer
point out, the best way to compare world-class men
and women would be to bring both groups into the
laboratory and test them under identical conditions.
Since that's not feasible, Seiler and Sailer tried
to do the next best thing: they examined the top
running performances by men and women over the last
40 years but limited the analysis to running events
in which men and women performed under nearly
identical conditions. They used Olympic and world
track and field championship finals to ensure that
males and females were always running on the same
track at comparable temperatures and humidities. To
broaden the analysis, they used times from the top
six finishers of each race, instead of utilizing the
'sample size of one' that a world-record performance
represents. Realizing that races from the 1950s and
1960s were hand-timed with stopwatches, a procedure
which is notorious for inducing inaccuracies, they
determined 'true times' by analyzing films of the
events electronically. To make sure that wind
conditions didn't throw the numbers off, they
obtained wind-velocity measurements from almost
every race and corrected the raw times. Sailer and
Seiler even altitude-adjusted the times from the
Munich and Mexico City Olympic Games. They threw out
data when boycotts kept the best runners home (as in
the 1980 Olympics). And when unusual occurrences
played havoc with the data (like the sudden
rainstorm which pelted female runners during the
1960 Olympic 200-metre final), they simply
eliminated the numbers.
Smallest in the 80s
Overall, the S-men analyzed the results of 182
championship finals (91 men's, 91 women's) from 12
Olympics and five IAAF world championships held
between 1952 and 1996, collecting a total of 1091
data points. They found that the male-female gap was
narrowest in the 1970s for 800-metre competitions -
and smallest in the 1980s for every other distance
except the marathon. Since the 70s at 800 metres,
and since the 80s at other distances, the space
between men and women has been increasing.
The
analysis reveals that the size of the gender
difference currently ranges from 9 to 13 per cent
across events (e.g., male speeds are 9- to 13-per
cent faster than those of females). There is a
consistent trend for the gap to enlarge as the
distance of the event increases from 100 to 10,000
metres (male 10-K runners have opened a bigger gap
between themselves and their female peers, compared
to male sprinters). The key finding concerning the
relative equivalency of male-female performances is
that if the marathon is excluded, the mean
performance gap for the other running events has
increased from 11% in the mid 80s to 12% in the mid
90s. In other words, in the last 10 years women have
fallen another percentage point behind the men.
The
marathon, however, is still showing a narrowing of
the performance gap in the 90s, owing to slower
performance by males (their average time has
decreased from 2:11.30 to 2:14.21). Female times are
unchanged in the 90s (2:30.02 vs. 2:30.17).
Looking at world records only, S & S found a
comparable spreading between females and males. They
point out that world records for males have improved
by an average of over 1 per cent since 1989 whereas
those for females have improved by just .3 percent -
or 0 per cent if a single, highly controversial
track meet in Beijing is excluded. Seven of the 10
men's world records standing in 1989 have been
broken in the 90s, and men's world records set in
the 80s had been bettered a total of 23 times by the
end of 1996. In comparison, women's world records
from 1989 have been broken only once or three times,
depending on whether the two controversial Chinese
records are accepted.
The
idea that men are outstripping women was strongly
reinforced during an incredible 12-day stretch this
summer (August 13-24) when six men took part in a
'world-record orgy,' smashing seven world records at
distances ranging from 800 to 10,000 metres in the
process. One of the men, Daniel Komen, a 21-year-old
who on August 22 established an almost unbelievable
new 5000-metre mark of 12:39.74 (that's 60.8 seconds
per 400, less than a tick off 4-minute pace for 1600
metres), had earlier in the summer done what a few
short years ago was considered unthinkable - he
covered two miles back-to-back, each in less than
four minutes, on the way to a sub-eight-minute world
record for two miles.
During
the same 12-day period, two young men established
new world junior records: Japheth Kimutai ran 800
metres in a sizzling 1:43.64, and Noah Ngeny covered
1500 metres in only 3:34.54. Slightly earlier during
the summer, one young female did get into the
world-record-smashing act: Sally Barsosio ripped
through 10K in 31:32.92 at the World Championships
in Athens. Overall, for these 10 new world records
set in August, eight different men were involved -
and only one woman.
Look at the key differences
As Seiler and Sailer put it, 'the women are not
still gaining on the men. The gap isn't even stable.
The world's fastest female runners have become
slower in the 90s! Is the widening of the gender gap
in running 'significant'? Statistically, the
question is irrelevant. We are comparing two
populations of world elite athletes, not samples.
The increase in the gap is real.'
Are Seiler and Sailer right? Is the chasm between
men and women really becoming wider?
To
answer that question appropriately, we first need to
understand what really ARE the key differences
between male and female athletes. It's important to
remember that both groups respond to training in
basically the same way. As the amount or intensity
of training increases, aerobic capacity (VO2max)
shoots upward, body fat tends to decrease and
performance improves, regardless of gender. There is
scattered evidence that females recover from
exceedingly strenuous workouts faster than men (in
theory, oestrogen, the primary female sex hormone,
may spur muscle recovery because of its unique
antioxidant properties); however, the data are as
yet somewhat inconclusive.
Although
the physiological changes which occur during
training are similar in males and females, it's
obvious that males frequently achieve better
performance times than similarly trained females.
Part of the reason for this is that males routinely
engage in a perfectly legal, natural form of 'blood
doping'. The key male sex hormone - testosterone -
promotes the production of haemoglobin, an
oxygen-carrying protein found inside red blood
cells, and testosterone also increases the
concentration of red cells in the blood. The key
female hormone - oestrogen - has no such effect. As
a result, each litre of male blood contains about
150-160 grams of haemoglobin, compared to only
130-140 grams for females. The bottom line is that
each 'male' litre of blood can carry about 11 per
cent more oxygen than a similar quantity of female
blood.
Note
how closely this 'oxygen gap' parallels the
performance gap observed by Seiler and Sailer, who
found a male-female performance difference of
exactly 11 per cent in the 1980s - and 12 per cent
today. Is this just a coincidence, or does the
11-per cent enhancement of blood oxygen in males
produce the 11-per cent improvement in running
speeds? Since oxygen is needed to furnish most of
the energy required for endurance exercise, some
scientists have suspected that the 11-per cent
oxygen difference is the key factor behind
male-female performance variation.
Although
that's an attractive theory, something else must be
going on. For one thing, a close to 11-per cent gap
is also observed in the 100-metre and 200-metre
sprints, even though oxygen plays little role in
furnishing the energy required for those brief
events; almost all of the energy is created
anaerobically.
To
gain further insight into the physiology of
male-female performance differences, Kirk Cureton
and colleagues at the Human Performance Laboratory
at the University of Georgia conducted a study
several years ago in which they removed just under a
litre of blood from each of 10 male athletes - so
that their blood haemoglobin concentrations would be
the same as those found in 11 female athletes. Three
days after the bloodletting, both males and females
were tested for VO2max and endurance capacity ('Sex
Difference in Maximal Oxygen Uptake', European
Journal of Applied Physiology, vol. 54, pp. 656-660,
1986).
The
blood removal caused male haemoglobin concentrations
to drop to 134 grams per litre, exactly the same as
in the female athletes' blood. In addition, male
VO2max values (ml/kg/min) plunged by seven per cent
and became roughly equivalent to those of the
females. However, male endurance capability declined
by only five per cent, and males continued to fare
better than females during an endurance test which
involved pedalling a cycle ergometer as long as
possible against steadily increasing resistance.
What
about muscle composition?
Some scientists have speculated that key differences
in muscle composition or metabolism might also slow
females down a bit. However, recent tests have
determined that male and female athletes have about
the same percentages of 'fast-twitch' and
'slow-twitch' muscle fibres. Other research has
determined that females do tend to metabolize more
fat than men do during moderate exercise, a
potential advantage for females because of the
possibility of greater glycogen conservation.
However, this difference is unlikely to represent an
advantage for females during 10-K and shorter
efforts, since the high intensities associated with
such competitions tend to deter fat metabolism and
the short durations of these events make
performance-limiting glycogen depletion unlikely.
In
addition, the difference in fat metabolism, while
present in novice and moderately trained athletes,
may disappear in world-class males and females.
Research has shown that highly trained male and
female endurance runners break down fat at about the
same rate during long-distance running ('Energy
Metabolism and Regulatory Hormones in Women and Men
during Endurance Exercise,' European Journal of
Applied Physiology, vol. 59, pp. 1-9, 1989).
That
means that when just two things - percent body fat
and VO2max - are equalized, the endurance running
performances of similarly-trained males and females
should become pretty much the same. Not
surprisingly, Russ Pate, Ph.D., an exercise
physiologist at the University of South Carolina,
found that eight male and eight female runners with
equivalent VO2max values and nearly equal amounts of
body fat (about 17 per cent) had nearly identical
finishing times in a 15-mile race ('A Physiological
Comparison of Performance-Matched Female and Male
Distance Runners,' Research Quarterly of Exercise
and Sport, vol. 56, pp. 245-250, 1985).
So,
assuming for the moment that the chasm between men
and women is indeed widening, what is causing the
rift? Sailer and Seiler mention the two other key
female 'deficiencies' - less muscle mass and smaller
hearts than men, even after correction for smaller
body size. However it hardly seems possible that
these physical characteristics have changed much in
the last 10 years or so.
The
'S men' take a verbal walk through the other factors
which are thought to enhance world-class
performances. These include population growth, which
increases the total number of physiologically unique
individuals who are capable of competing well in
international competitions, improved nutrition and
health, which increases bodysize and optimizes
development of the muscular and nervous systems, and
better track surfaces and superior, more aerodynamic
athletic clothing, which can increase average
running speeds. However, all of these developments
should aid females just as much as they do males.
They
also note that, compared to earlier times, attitudes
toward female participation in competitive sports
have become considerably more liberal, which has
increased the total number of women who train and
compete seriously, and that females are also
participating in events in which they historically
were barred (such as the marathon and 10,000 metres).
The former effect should permit the discovery of
larger numbers of talented female athletes, and the
latter development increases the opportunities for
female athletes to choose the event for which they
are best suited. However, both of these changes
should narrow the gender gap, not widen it.
Can
the answer be drug testing?
Seiler and Sailer then focus on the factor which
they believe is most responsible for the 'decline of
female athletes' - drug testing! As they point out,
random, surprise drug checks were introduced into
the world of track and field in 1989, 'at least
partly in response to the embarrassment of the Ben
Johnson case in the 1988 Olympics'. Drug use, say
Seiler and Sailer, benefits females more than males;
therefore its supposed abolition as a result or
random testing has hurt elite female performances
far more than those of their male counterparts.
Critics of their contention can point out that drug
testing actually took place as far back as the 1964
Olympic games. That being true, why should the
current drug-testing strategies have such a
powerful, recent effect on the gender gap? Seiler
and Sailer reply that the early tests lacked enough
sensitivity to truly detect 'dopers', and also point
out that tests were usually only associated with
major events, allowing athletes to train throughout
most of the year under the influence of
performance-enhancing drugs and then 'get clean' in
time for a big competition.
To
summarize, they believe that the initial narrowing -
and the current widening - of the gender gap 'is
largely a consequence of the rise and fall in the
illegal use of performance-enhancing drugs from the
60s to the 90s'. To put it in a nutshell, as female
athletes began using steroids, they became more like
men and performed accordingly. As soon as drug
testing stopped such doping, the women became less
like men and their performances slumped.
Cocaine
and brandy cocktails
Are Seiler and Sailer right? Well, it's important to
bear in mind that the use of drugs to enhance
physical performance is not such a new thing. The
ancient Greeks used stimulants before and during
athletic competitions, and it's believed that the
Aztecs used a cactus-based stimulant to improve
distance-running capacity. Competitive swimmers in
the Netherlands in the 1800s used caffeine to perk
up their performances, and during the same time
period many Europeans believed that the ingestion of
sugar cubes dipped in ether could promote athletic
prowess. Cocktails of cocaine and brandy were
popular among competitive athletes about 100 years
ago.
Steroid-like compounds similar to those which have
speeded up Olympic athletes were first synthesized
in the 1930s, and their initial systematic use to
boost performance may have been by German troops at
the 'Battle of The Bulge' in 1944. It's generally
believed that Olympic athletes first began using
steroids in the late 1940s to early1950s, and that
the intake amounts of these ergogenic drugs have
steadily increased over time.
If S & S's contention is true, then either male
athletes have abstained totally from using drugs
while their female counterparts have doped wildly
(this would explain how females, especially from the
so-called Communist bloc, could suddenly approach
male performances in the 1970s when drugs became
very popular - and then fall back when the drugs
were taken away), or else males and females have
both been taking performance-enhancing drugs, but
males have gained little benefit while the females
were 'going through the roof'.
It's very unlikely that either of these hypotheses
is accurate. Drug use by males in sports other than
running has been documented to be widespread; it's
unlikely that male runners would remain snow-white.
Furthermore, the changes associated with steroid use
- greater muscle mass, heightened anaerobic power,
increased fatigue resistance, and improved recovery
from workouts - are extremely attractive to male
runners, making the drugs very hard to resist.
Indeed, close observers of the international running
scene contend that drug use by male athletes is
rampant.
With
regard to the second point (that males benefit
little from drugs, while females gain a lot), if the
drugs indeed had little impact on male performances,
it's difficult to understand why their use would
have become so widespread. In power events,
increased muscle mass can benefit even already
highly muscular men; in endurance efforts, greater
fatigue resistance and superior recovery are
extremely beneficial, even to the male athlete who
is already extremely strong in those areas. Even a
second or two of improvement can mean the difference
between a world championship and an
'out-of-the-money' finishing position.
In
short, steroids can transform the elite male athlete
into a sort of 'superman' and the elite female into
a kind of 'superman-woman'. It's illogical to
suggest that a curtailment of doping had little
effect on males, allowing them to continue to blaze
their way to new records, while that same
curtailment caused women's performances to stagnate.
Drug testing doesn't work
It may also take a leap of faith to believe that the
new drug testing has actually had much impact on
drug use. Instead, it's more likely that athletes
have become much more sophisticated about concealing
their doping. Insiders reveal that this is the case,
and even the athletes themselves sometimes refer to
it, although their tattling often occurs after
retirement (note Carl Lewis's recent announcement
that U. S. athletes have turned the United States
into 'the East Germany of the 1990s'). Political and
financial considerations suggest that the drug
testing may in reality have little bite. Would the
organizers and promoters of the multi-million pound
Olympic Games really reveal that many of their
high-profile gold medallists were in reality nothing
more than druggies?
The
notion that drug testing is behind the increased gap
also seems ridiculous when one takes a look at the
Kenyan men and women. Both are superlative, but the
gap between the Kenyan males and females has grown
even wider than the gender disparity in other parts
of the world as Kenyan males have smashed one world
record after another. Yet it is an absolute
certainty that both Kenyan males and females have
been 'clean' since Kip Keino got the Kenyan ball
rolling back in the 1960s.
Note,
too, that Whipp and Ward's data demonstrated that
the remarkable increase in female running speeds
started far before the heavily drugged 1970s,
suggesting that drugs weren't required for women to
excel. Further-more, the rate of increase in the 70s
and 80s was the same as it had been in prior years,
despite all of the new performance-enhancing drugs.
Consider the Kenyans
However, if the widening gap IS a reality, then what
other factors could account for it? Bear in mind
that the newest world records have all been set by
African men. And most of these African men have been
Kenyan men. Out of the nine new men's senior and
junior world records we mentioned earlier, six were
set by Kenyan men and two were established by a man
of Kenyan origin who is now a citizen of Denmark;
only one of the nine was attained by a non-Kenyan -
the 5-K mark reached by Haile Gebrselassie of
Ethiopia (which, incidentally, was shattered nine
days later by Daniel Komen of - you guessed it -
Kenya).
On
the distance side of things, it is primarily the
Kenyan men who have widened the gap between male and
female performances. As we mentioned earlier,
looking at the Kenyan situation is an instructive
way to examine whether the widening of the gap is
really the result of drug prohibitions, as Seiler
and Sailer suggest.
It
is an absolute certainty that the Kenyan men and
women have not been using drugs - either recently or
in the past. For one thing, 'sports medicine' - and
its associated pharmacopoeia - does not exist in
Kenya: Most of the Kenyans would simply not have
access to performance-enhancing drugs. In addition,
the Kenyan runners have an abhorrence for putting
anything strange and unusual, including drugs, into
their bodies. It is hard to even get them to eat
dessert! That's why the Kenyans have always tested
'clean' when they have been examined (Editor's note:
Kenyan five-time world champion and Olympic gold
medallist John Ngugi was temporarily banned from the
sport because he refused to urinate into a bottle
for a drug tester, not because he was a user;
double-world-record-holder Komen tested positive for
caffeine, but it was determined that the excess
caffeine in his urine came from that highly
ergogenic and unusual substance, Coca Cola).
The Kenyan men are opening up a chasm between their
performances and those of their own countrywomen,
and their sizzling new world standards are making
overall men's performances look better and better,
compared to those of women. Yet drugs - or lack of
same - have absolutely nothing to do with these
phenomena.
So
what's really going on?
For one thing, the Kenyan men are training harder
than the Kenyan women do. That doesn't necessarily
mean running at relatively faster speeds, compared
to the women; of course the men are absolutely
faster, but both groups may train at a similar
percentage of VO2max (remember that males' VO2max
values are elevated compared to females). However,
the Kenyan men tend to run more repetitions of
difficult intervals or hill climbs - sometimes
50-per cent more. And their weekly mileage levels
can be 25-per cent greater, too.
In
addition to the heavier work load, one of the key
factors to take into account is the fact that many
of these barrier-breaking African men are 'training
in packs': they are working together to push men's
running standards to what seemed to be unreachable
levels. Komen, the fellow with the unbelievable new
two-mile and 5-K marks, trains incredibly hard under
the protective wing of another Kenyan male, Moses
Kiptanui, who is himself a former world record
holder in two different events.
'He
listens because he wants to know more - because he
wants to be the best. He can break a record almost
any time he really wants to,' says Kiptanui of Komen.
'I follow in his footsteps; that's why I have
succeeded,' says Komen about Kiptanui.
It's
no coincidence that two of the other new Kenyan
record-breakers, Wilson Boit Kipketer and Bernard
Barmasai, have also trained with Kiptanui, or that
other Kenyan men who have recently made
breakthroughs, like Lameck Aguta (winner of the 1997
Boston Marathon after several previous, unsuccessful
attempts) have been training with Kiptanui.
Similarly, Dieter Baumann set a new European record
over 5,000 metres after training with Kenyan men.
The
success of the runners who work with Kiptanui
doesn't mean that Kiptanui is the 'god of training,'
an all-knowing figure who can put almost anyone on
the path to a world record with the right workouts.
What it means is that these men have been using
principles which have actually been popular in the
women's rights movement, challenging each other to
become better and 'mentoring' each other - teaching
each other what it really takes, physically,
mentally, and emotionally, to make it to the top.
There
is a synergy in such personal and training
relationships which can have a huge impact on
performances. Workout quality rises to a new level
because an individual is training with other
incredibly fit runners, yet recoveries are also
better because at least one person in the group (in
this case Kiptanui) is wise enough to know that
proper training combines both punishing work and
gentle rest and realizes that a macho approach to
training - trying to kick someone's butt every day
during workouts - is a recipe for BO (burn-out), not
PB. Actual racing strategies are also superior
because they are plotted with someone who has won
crucial competitions and/or shattered world records.
The
Moroccans, too
This group approach is no doubt one reason why
Moroccan men have also enjoyed immense recent
success. The Moroccan government has opened two new
training centres within Morocco at which their top
athletes train together under the tutelage of sports
scientists. Moroccan officials claim that women will
benefit from these facilities as much as men, but so
far social strictures have limited the development
of Moroccan female athletes, and it is the men who
have been burning their way to fast times and
occasional world records.
These
kinds of beneficial relationships have worked on a
more limited scale among some female runners. For
example, Joyce Chepchumba, a very fine yet not
previously overpowering runner, won this year's
London Marathon by beating the very tough Liz
McColgan on her home turf. Joyce had been mentored
for at least two years prior to London by her more
successful and probably physiologically superior
partner, Tegla Loroupe, and that alliance is
undoubtedly a key reason for Joyce's success. Tegla
herself has the best chance of any female runner of
shattering Ingrid Kristiansen's 16-year-old world
marathon record, but she has no Kiptanuis or Komens
to train with.
'Very
few of the Europeans are training in groups,' says
Kiptanui. 'Those who are, such as the Spanish and
Germans, have benefited recently. The Spanish took
gold and silver in the World Championships Marathon
in Athens, and the Spaniard, Fermin Cacho, was
second in the 1500-metre final. The German, Dieter
Baumann, who visited Kenya last winter, recently
broke the European 5,000-metre record. There are
many advantages to training in groups.'
Indeed
there are. It was immediately after the Kenyan AAA
began putting their best athletes together in
training groups prior to the World Cross- Country
Championships (back in the 1980s) that the Kenyans
began dominating world cross-country (that
domination now includes 12 consecutive men's team
championships). If groups of female athletes began
working together, offering each other total support
as well as exciting challenges, we might see the
gender gap beginning to close back up again - along
with a spate of new women's world records.
It's
also fair to say that only a very small minority of
the world's female population has been given a true
opportunity to compete athletically, and that
overall the athletic potential of females has been
fostered and supported much less, compared with
males. And within countries in which males and
females are running impressively, there is usually
much more pressure on females to forgo running and
follow other, more traditional pursuits. When these
situations are corrected, it's highly unlikely that
the gender gap will widen; in fact, it's much more
likely that we will see women shrinking it.
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