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Nicole Rhodes
Ali Beemsterboer
English 201
29 May 2016
Whats One More Thing for Men to Rule: Finding Womens place in Athletics
Abstract: This text is questioning why men are looked as being the superior athletes in
comparison to women in sports, and more specifically in long distance running. It also questions
why we as society feel the need to compare them. The Men Vs. Women challenge advertisement
campaign put on by Nike plus acts as the representative example for this text in order to see how
society still values male athletes more than female athletes. The author consulted Robert
Degners work, which explains how men have experienced a longer predisposition to being
competitive. The author also joined a conversation with Christine Wegner about her research
regarding statistics of female marathon runners. It was found that the number has plateaued and
it speculated that this is caused by social norms restricting women from spending extra time on
training that they are using right now to raise children.
Tags: distance running, gender norms, gender equality, gender comparison
Being a runner myself I have experienced a lot of comparison between other runners and
myself. I ran cross-country and track in high school and I always felt awkward when I was faster
than some of the guys on the team. I remember doing a mock race during practice one day and I
was running next to a boy who was about the same pace as I was, he started to drop off in the
middle of the race and I told him he couldnt give up now, to which he responded with I just
cant do it, I cant even keep up with a girl. The more I thought about this over the years, I
became more and more angry. I was angry at him for thinking the way he did, that he had to be
better than me because I was a girl, I was angry at society for assuming that men were supposed
to be better than women in sports, and I was angry at myself for not trying to correct him or give
him more words of encouragement after he said that. I thought that society had gotten past this
mindset, but I guess not.

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One more thing for men to rule, is the caption on the advertisement of the Men vs.
Women challenge put on by Nike Plus (Gould). This particular ad is obviously supporting the
men in the challenge. One more thing for men to rule. Is it supposed to intimidate women? Or
empower men? Did Nike even think about the fact that the ad might come off as offensive? What
exactly are they trying to accomplish? But mainly, why are we making it a competition between
men and women? With all this being said, if society knows that there are limitations that have
held women back from being as physically capable as men and, if male and female bodies are
created differently, why does society continue to value male athletes as more capable and
superior to female athletes? My initial hypothesis is that because men have been participating in
sports for a much longer period of time than women have, we tend to value them more than
female athletes.
The Nike Plus ad, which I will be analyzing as my representative example, was part of a
campaign originally to get more women to join Nike plus, an app that connects to your iPod or
phone to track your mileage and pace. I chose to use this advertisement as my representative
example because Nike is a pretty well known company and they are still ignoring gender
equality just for one of their campaigns. The employees at Nike decided that the best way to get
women to join the app was to start a battle of the sexes. On the ad in favor of the mens side there
is a guy running wearing Nike running clothes. He looks very focused. There are big white
words in front of him saying one more thing for men to rule. and then under that in smaller
letters are words saying join the men vs. women challenge at nikeplus.com. He looks like he
knows what he is doing, like he is an experienced runner (correct form, proper running clothes,
defined muscles, etc.). There was an ad similar to the mens ad supporting the women. There is
an experienced, focused female runner with words in front of her saying, Ladies First. Men

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second. It seems ironic that they chose to say ladies first because at no point in history have
women dominated sports.
Men have a vastly different athletic background than women do. The Olympics have been
around for thousands of years, running events have been included in all of them. Except, only for
men. Women werent able to participate until 1900 and didnt start competing in running events
until the 1928 Olympics (The History of Womens Running). A handful of women were able to
compete in the 800m run in 1928, however a lot of them collapsed at the end of the race so it was
banned until 1960. This seems really unfair because even though they were allowed to finally run
they hadnt gone through proper training, or education on how to race an 800m. After that event
there became a rule that women could not race more than 1.5 miles because they physiologically
incapable of running more than that. The marathon was not incorporated into the games for
women until 1984 after a group of women fought long and hard to prove that they should have
the rights to race more than 1.5 miles (The History of Womens Running). Women have not had
nearly enough time to adapt their bodies for maximum potential because our history did not
include lots of physical activity. Why were men participating in sports when women werent?
Men on the other hand have had plenty of time to adapt their bodies for physical activity.
Robert Deaner and some of his colleagues published an article exploring the evidence that men
have had an evolutionary history of physical competition, they hypothesized that because men
were involved in more physical activity, Men have experienced a longer predisposition to be
competitive, which has driven them to be more interested in sportsSocieties have documented
female participation in sports but men were always shown to be more involved. (Deaner) While
they did document women participating in sports they werent nearly as competitive or involved
in them as men were. Could this biological response have been influenced by the social norms

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of that time? Where these social norms influencing females drive for competition as well? How
has womens biology played a role into their athletic participation? Why was it acceptable for
men to play sports while women stayed inside and cared for children?
Women are still evolving their bodies to be capable of maximum athletic performance.
Russell Pate and Jennifer ONeill published a paper about the advances women have made in the
sport of marathon running. They looked into the trend of the best marathon times for women
over the span of 30 years to see how they have changed. It was discovered that women improved
their marathon times by 15.6% over thirty years, while the best male marathon times have
remained fairly constant for recent decades. They also looked at the physiological differences
between male and female runners. The male runners had statistically significant higher values
of height, weight, sum of 6-site skinfolds, V O2max and V E compared with the female runners.
(Pate). These biological differences have been adapted over many centuries so that men could
run to catch food or fight off enemies. Its okay to compare males and females. However, we
need to draw the line when comparison turns into a hierarchical comparison and a placement of
women and men on a scale based on factors that shouldnt be compared. This is why I found the
Nike ad destructive to the work that many people have put their entire lives into for gender
equality. Does being a child bearer mean that womens bodies arent as physically capable of
athletic performance because their bodies are able to bear children? It seems like weve made a
lot of progress with feminism but we still have a lot of work to do.
Social norms of women and mothers being the primary caregivers for children have had an
impact on the number of women participating in sports. Christine Wegner did a study about the
number of women running full marathons and discovered that While the percentage of female
runners at every distance up to and including the half marathon has increased continually over

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the past 10 years, the percentage of women participating in full marathons has plateaued since
2006, with women still representing the minority in this distance at 43%. (Wegner) Women are
now the majority of half marathon runners at 61%. They suggested that women have found their
spot in running and have become most comfortable running half marathons. They continue and
say, The environmental filter that once precluded women from distance running has appeared to
shift, moving the exclusionary barriers, and now seems to apply only to the longest race
distances of 26.2 miles and beyond. (Wegner) The article mentioned that it is not difficult for
women to start running initially, that we have jumped that hurdle but it does become difficult for
women to up the amount of time they spend training for races longer than the half marathon
(Wegner). They speculate this is because it takes more time out of each day to train for a full
marathon that most women using to take care of their children. So have we really jumped over
social norms? Society used to see women as exclusively caregivers and nothing else. Their job
was to stay at home, care for the kids, and clean the house. Now, its socially acceptable for
women to run and race but they still have to devote their main priorities to caring for children,
given that they are mothers, but running is something they can do if they have spare time. Men
have less of a hard time fitting running into their schedules because of they arent expected to see
to their children as much as women are.
Another issue with societys hierarchy or gender is the pay scale for women compared to
men. This article titled, Here's why it's fair that female athletes make less than men by Shane
Ferro discussed why its fair that women get paid less. Its because not as many people come to
watch female athletics. This specific article looked into soccer players but this is common among
most sports. The writers used fair in the sense that what their sport makes is relatively equal to
what each athletes makes. They went on to point out that what we really need to be focusing on

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is why, why are people less inclined to go see women compete, and put less time and money into
female sporting events? The real question is not why female athletes are paid less. People
should be asking why fans and sponsors are less interested in supporting women's sports and
this is what they should be outraged about.(Ferro) Once again it all goes back to social norms
that male sports are dominate, which somehow makes them more interesting. Why? Could this
difference in pay scale discourage women from running? Could it also empower them to fight for
their rights to have equal pay?
If we know that our historical differences have led to different biological capabilities than
why are we still initiating competitions between men and women? Who is this healthy for?
Could this be potentially harmful to men as well? Men too feel pressure from the hierarchy that
we have created as well. Except, they dont worry about whether they will be able to compete in
a sport, rather they worry If they will be able to keep up with the expectations that society has set
for them as fit males. When men see that women can beat them in a race they feel intimidated
and embarrassed that a girl could beat them. This hierarchy has led to many male athletes afraid
because they are supposed to be better, according to society. If they arent though, they can feel
pressure from other males as well as media to be better, stronger and faster. Athletes will go to
extreme measures to prove to society that they are the top dog. One common way they do this is
by abusing performance-enhancing drugs. A document released by The American College of
Sports Medicine stated that, Lifetime prevalence rates for steroid use among male adolescents
generally range between 4 and 12 percent and between .5 and 2 percent for female
adolescents.(Yesalis) This is showing that males have a higher chance of using steroids, this
article also mentioned that drug use can start pretty early in life, signaling that it could be due to
social pressures. If kids are using steroids so early in life it could be hard for them to stop later in

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life and also change their mindset that they dont need to use steroids to be great athletes.
How do we move forward? I think we have done a lot to get women in sports to where we
are today, but yet we still see sexist acts and comments being made on a large scale. Eric
Anderson did a study on the cultural forces that are affecting male athletes attitude towards
sexism. He says in his research, Competitive male team sport athletes might maintain
socionegative attitudes toward women even in a time when institutional sexism has been shown
to be decreasing. (Anderson 258). He used data from heterosexual men who played football in
high school, a very masculinized sport, and then went on to join collegiate cheerleading in
college. He found that the guys largely changed their views regarding womens athletics. They
respected womens leadership abilities and valued their friendship. While this is all well and
good, it astonishes me that men have to actually see women participating in sports close up and
interact with them for us to gain their respect. It shouldnt have to be like this, but if it helps men
take women more seriously in the athletic world then we need to continue in that direction.
Maybe this means that we just need to combine more sports and allow men to see that we are just
as willing to put in the work as they are. Is this the right way right that we should be going about
trying to demolish gender norms?
I dont think there is a right way to do it, however, we need to continue to talk about
gender norms and help break them down. There really is no need for comparison, we should be
able to respect each others differences whether it be due to biological differences or others, but
at the same time be able to support one another. Athletics is about bettering yourself and
improving your health, why have we turned into such a huge race for perfection? I will say that
there were some limitations for me in terms of constructing this essay; I was limited in the
amount of time I had to write it as well as the amount of resources I had to write it. With all this

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being said, we have definitely come a long way from where we were. As we can see there are
more barriers that we need to cross. There shouldnt be a single boy running a race thinking he
needs to beat all of the girls on the team. And there shouldnt be a single girl thinking she cant
be fast. Is this really what kids are focusing on? Is this what sports are STILL about?

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Work Cited
Anderson, Eric. ""I Used to Think Women Were Weak": Orthodox Masculinity, Gender
Segregation, and Sport." Sociological Forum 23.2 (2008): 257-80. Web. 29 May 2016.
Deaner, Robert O., David C. Geary, David A. Puts, Sandra A. Ham, Judy Kruger, Elizabeth Fles,
Bo Winegard, and Terry Grandis. "A Sex Difference in the Predisposition for Physical
Competition: Males Play Sports Much More than Females Even in the Contemporary
U.S." PLoS ONE 7.11 (2012): n. pag. Web. 15 May 2016.
Ferro, Shane. "Here's Why It's Fair That Female Athletes Make Less than Men." Business
Insider. Business Insider, Inc, 07 July 2015. Web. 29 May 2016.
Gould, Grace. "Nike Ad Analysis." N.p., n.d. Web. 29 May 2016.
Pate, Russell R., and Jennifer R. Oneill. "American Women in the Marathon." Sports Medicine
37.4 (2007): n. pag. Web. 13 May 2016.
"The History of Women's Running." ACTIVEkids. N.p., n.d. Web. 29 May 2016.
Wegner, Christine E., Lynn L. Ridinger, Jeremy S. Jordan, and Daniel C. Funk. "Get Serious."
Leisure Research 47.3 (n.d.): 305-21. Web. 15 May 2016.
Yesalis, Charles E., and Michael S. Bark. "Anabolic Steroids." American College of Sports
Medicine. N.p., n.d. Web. 29 May 2016.