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BY ROMA GONZALES
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Will women ever outrun men?
TWICE in a month I have witnessed the compensation disparity between men versus women in road running. It hurts my plantar fascia, but more so my heart, to see how female enthusiasm and participation in sports could be crushed so easily.
On one event, the organizers decided right at the venue a few hours before gun time, that the female category would be dissolved. They blamed the low number of registrants for this — there’s simply not just enough cash prize to give for another ‘extra’ category. The elite female athletes saw no point in joining and decided to save their energy for some other race.
The last one is quite similar but just as disappointing. Because of the rainy weather, fewer-than-expected participants came to the onsite registration. Because most races are fund-raising events, the organizers realized they could not gain any income if they adhered to their pre-advertised cash prizes of P700, P500 and P300 for the respective top three finishers for both male and female categories. What they did was to knock down the female category prizes to P300 and P200, saying buh-bye to the third place, and left the male category prizes just as it was.
How come the organizers couldn’t simply adjust and shave off the male prizes? Why must it always be the female category that should always be compromised? If this is not discouraging girls to participate in sports activities, then I don’t know what this is. It’s like they’re telling us “There’s nothing here for you, ladies. Why don’t you just go back to the kitchen and make us all a nutritious post-race smoothie?”
It wasn’t so much that I or a teammate could have won those female podiums that are upsetting — and I swear that with my all my IT band–but that it should send shivers down to any XX chromosome. With all due respect to the organizers who have years of experience, I believe it’s just discourtesy to the female athletes who train hard and race harder as far as their biological limits would allow them.
“Ah. Why don’t we then make men and women race against each other? They’re equals, right?”
Fine. Let’s go with that, but on one condition: they all have to have testicles.
Apparently, the only way a woman could outrun a man (given that they’re both pro), is when she is also able to produce substantial amounts of the hormone testosterone. TIME magazine asked Tim Noakes, University of Cape Town professor of exercise and sports science, if women could ever outrun men in a marathon race. He said: “Unfortunately the answer is, unless they become men, no, they won’t.”
The hormone lends so much physical power and muscular strength, and running requires a lot of leg power. Women are believed to have higher endurance because of having more body fat, but still they lack that hormonal edge for speed and power. They also menstruate, thus losing precious blood that carries oxygen, and are not able to produce just as much red blood cells as men because of testosterone.
As much as it is hard to believe with all the modernity of our time, this gender gap also pervades in some international major sports. For instance based on a Washington Post in 2015, the 2014 men’s football world cup winning team was given $35 million, while their women counterpart in 2013 was only given $2 million. The US open men’s golf winner received $1.8 million while the women’s only got $810,000.
Major sports are basically entertainment. It’s understandable that some men’s sports are more popular like NBA and men’s football. More sponsors equals more financial gain. This is the same logic why female catwalk models receive far more pay than the males. They are just far more female consumers when it comes to the fashion industry. However, could it be that some women’s sports are not as popular because we aren’t giving them the chance and the platform as much as we do with men’s? (Remember that we didn’t begin talking about prizes in world championships; we were talking about little podiums.)
It’s always fun and inspiring to watch people — male or female – push their known limits in whatever sports they choose to dedicate themselves to. Oh, the grit! Oh, the transcendence! People would probably only look at the clocked times and the final scores and the podiums and the medals — but behind those nerve-wracking race days and championship games are untold hours of relentless training and discipline, of self-doubt and renewed faith. Pain has no gender – so should glory, but bodies have, unfortunately. (rr_gonzales316@yahoo.com/PN)
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