men v women or vice versa lol

Zanda

New member
In my Blog, I was musing as to why the men and women shoot in different classes at competitions. In mho there are quite a few women who could more than hold their own when shooting against men !, in both compound and recurve, in this day of equality between men and women (so called) is it time to make archery shoots totally open.
If you think yes then say so, if not then say so, come on folks, lets have your feelings about this one.:beer::pie::cake:
 

mizzat

New member
Fonz Awardee
Ironman
I've always wondered about this. Shooting compound bow, I think most top archers shoot similar poundage. Many females shoot over 50 pounds. So I can't see why they should seperate the sexes into classes. Is there a suggestion that females are inherently less accurate with abow than a males. I can't see how that could be the case. Is it just the way things have always been? Why not seperate archers based on the bow weight rather than sex?

Steve
 

sp220

Active member
Skill is purely based on ability and practice - gender has zero to do with it...

Women could quite easily compete against men or vise versa.

I know women my age who have practised at 90m purely because they could and didnt see why they shouldnt. purely because it was more difficult and provided better practice than 70m all the time.

That was for recurve btw, im assuming compound is even more even due to the arrow speeds.
 

Watch_Man

Active member
Most lady archers are 5'6" or shorter most gents are 5'5" or taller. Most ladies have shorter draw lengths than men and do not pull the same draw weights.

Just look at the results of the top 10 lady and gents in major competitions and compare them.

Take my wife Wendy, she is 5'1" and has a 24" draw pulling 43lb. Put her against Andy R or Chris W both over 6ft pulling 60lb with 30" arrows.

There is some overlap, no doubt, but the majority of lady archers do not have the same physical advantages as the men.

Just look at how much easier it is for a gent with a long arrow length and high draw weight to spine a max diameter line cutter and then compare it to the 2114 my wife shoots. And outdoors the gents can shoot flatter trajectory arrows at higher speeds giving significant advantages, especially in the wind.

At a local level Wendy holds her own against the men, however at higher levels I believe it gets to a point where physical advantages can compensate for skill.
 

wanshu

New member
Simple solution is when and where the individual wishes to compete they should be allowed to on an equal footing. They could challenge the rules if they wished I'm sure. Equality in all things.

So the man asks "Who buys the drinks"? Woman says "Both of us, but it still comes out of your pocket". Man "OK dear".::muttering under his breath, "Women".

The Vegas comp, I'm sure the guys competing would shudder and smile a little at the thought of the little ladies being there on the line with them.

Especially when they have an equal chance of taking away the top prize. Less of an advantage having higher poundage indoors.
 

grimsby archer

New member
Simple:
seperate competitions for men and women gives us guys a chance!

If we had an open "recurve" shoot for both genders there would be one trophy and maybe 3 medals?
With seperate competition, thats 2 trophies, maybe 6 medals?
More chance of winning something:rotfl:
 

tel

Active member
Fonz Awardee
to save me actually looking it up....
anyone know how the records stand? Should be a good indicator of equality (or not).
 

felixity

New member
apparently the olympic record for the qualifying round (72 arrows) is 676 for the ladies and 684 for the men. female team 1984, male team 2031
 

rstamp

New member
These are the last ones I found and may have changed since.

NATIONAL RECORDS
TARGET ARCHERY OUTDOOR
FITA & GNAS METRIC ROUNDS
20 APRIL 2007
R/C U/C L/C B/B L/B
Gents FITA Ladies 1202 1273 1047 0 507
Gent 1325 1405 1187 1041 795
Ladies FITA Ladies 1347 1397 1148 1129 771
 

Erika

New member
kg for kg men are physically stronger. I shoot 60lbs. But i have to work considerably harder to maintain that than the men that i shoot with. Even if they are the same body weight as me they build and maintain muscle more easily. Even in diet terms that sucks!!!! Marcus eats junk and maintains the 60lbs easy... i have to up protein, iron, calcium and calories just to get there.

In general, the men that i shoot against have 3inches extra draw length, 30% more muscle mass (i believe that's the statistic... but not sure), 20kg+ in body mass, and 4" in height.

The Aussie mens compound team in Leipzig: Clint, Pat and Rob. They'd average around 115kg each... when shooting next to them in wind that i can't stand up in they're like 'what wind?'. lol shooting between them is great... best wind breaks ever :D

Recurve: Dave Barnes, Tim Cuddihy, Sky Kim.... all easily over 90kg. All over 6 foot. A girl can start feeling somewhat petite in this veritable forest of man mountains.

Granted this isn't always the case - Braden, Liam etc... But even then they outweigh me and naturally carry more muscle mass.

I like shooting 90m and I enjoy shooting against the men, but I'm also realistic in knowing that they have a physical advantage over me so I have to work harder for the same result.
 

speed

New member
Ironman
Indoors i see no reason why men and women can not compete equally but outdoors the comments above about draw length and physical size and mass do have some bearing on the level of competition.

But what really gets me going is the different scores required by women indoors compared to men, yet GNAS do not recognise that children\juniors should have different scores for each level.
Why should my ten year old boy have to score the same as me ( he shoots around 12lb i shoot nearly 42lb both recurve) indoors this is completeely and totally out of order and needs changing by GNAS immediatly or are they advocating discrimnation and non encouragement of juniors???

Sorry to rant but we should be encouraging juniors not penalising them because GNAS can't find a few hours to sit down and decide on appropriate scores for them to reach the indoor classification levels.

Yes I have spoken via email to the GNAS junior secretary over this.


Going back to the original post on this thread I agree that poundage at full draw cold be used to group archers outdoors possibly better than the system we have at present.
 

Marcus26

Well-known member
In the Open classes I can not see it working well with women competing against the Men. As Erika said the women can do it, but the physical size and strength is much higher giving huge advantage.
Even a man of the same size as a women is around 50% stronger.
Indoor wise they compete well, at our last 2 indoor QREs a women has finished in the top 2 in both, however even indoor I wouldn't mix them because size still matters.

In the Under Cadet divisions though I would consider mixing them and in the Over Masters divisions also.
 

JohnR

The American
Supporter
American Shoot
The other reason, other than physical strength, for elite men to score generally higher than elite women, is differences in the use the brain makes of visual information. Men tend to be better at aiming, women make better use of peripheral vision.

John
 

Snarkhunter

New member
Ironman
But what really gets me going is the different scores required by women indoors compared to men, yet GNAS do not recognise that children\juniors should have different scores for each level.
My son shoots longbow and suffers from this lack of effort by GNAS: he is 11 and yet is effectively considered the same as a 17 year old for classification purposes. The differences physically between men and women highlighted by Erica are nothing compared to those between and 11 year old boy (even one, like my son, who is large for his age) and one of 17!

Surely they could have based the age groups on the progression shown for Recurve for the different age groups. Hell, they could have used the scores given for recurve for the younger age groups and my son would have such a discouraging mountain to climb!
 

Good Sir Pete

New member
Some very valid points so far, I think. As erika says, it may not be feasible - or would certainly be difficult for the female archers, but if competitions were categorised by bow weight and not gender, i can imagine the competition being very fair. At any rate, I would say yes either way as a third category (not a replacement of the other two!) would actually mean more medals not less! :yummy:
 

bimble

Well-known member
Supporter
Fonz Awardee
Ironman
AIUK Saviour
Back in the day when the BUSA Outdoors were Albion/Windsors the lady compounds were moved up to the Albions with the guys for the simple fact that they were finding the Widsor a tad too easy.

Though now we've switched to a FITA :)thumbsdow :censored:) they now shoot the Ladies FITA. I will admit that I quite enjoyed shooting outdoors and shooting with the girls.. I'm very tempted to do a Hereford just for that fact!!
 

moo-mop

New member
I've always believed nobody should be using classification scores or their position within a devision to judge their own performances.

Yes, there are some devisions to help people judge valid differences bewteen different people and their bows (men, women, juniors age groups, our five bowtypes ) and they are there for very good reasons. eg women are smaller and I accept that makes it harder. Then yes GNAS have set some scores as classifications in each devision - but you can't do this for everyone and if you're missing so what? hell, eg I'm quite small for a gent, should we have a small gents devision? I don't think so.

No one gets their own special circumstances taken into account unless you as an archer (with your coach, or parent I guess for a lot of juniors, if you have one) go out of your way to do that. And if you want to improve that's precisely what I think you have to do. GNAS can't do it all for you in this case, judge for yourself and be pleased for yourself, not some externally imposed score.
 
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wanshu

New member
The other reason, other than physical strength, for elite men to score generally higher than elite women, is differences in the use the brain makes of visual information. Men tend to be better at aiming, women make better use of peripheral vision.

John
Men tend to be better at aiming, women make better use of peripheral vision.
Not sure that this is right, I seem to remember that it's actually men who are regarded as having superior peripheral vision. Women tend to have a better concentration. Men have other things on their minds every few seconds.

It should be allowed under the rules for either sex to enter which ever distance they choose. As long as they can make that distance without missing to often, why not.
 

sp220

Active member
Using poundage as a category would be PANTS.

Im not even going to elaborate on why - it should be obvious.

I dont see what poundage has to do with a persons skill.
 

Marcus26

Well-known member
Poundage isn't the issue anyway. It's upper body strength.
Erika is quite strong for a small girl. Can shoot 60lb and uses an UltraElite. However she can not lift weights anywhere near what an average male can. Even just lifting a dumbbell and she can only lift about 1/5 of the weight that I use for light training, and I am not a weights guy.

Physical strength is a massive advantage in this sport, in fact it's quite under rated. If you can hold a bow rock still without straining muscles then you have a good chance to win. If you can do that with a 10lb mass weight bow in the wind you will win. (or come close)
 
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