Mounting evidence from exercise science indicates that women are physiologically better suited than men to endurance efforts such as running marathons.
We have a lot of marathon data. There is a large, consistent difference showing the opposite. This article is horrendously unscientific, so many claims, assumptions, and over summarizing and simplifying
Author does address this, btw. I still think it’s a bad argument. I just couldn’t fathom that they would say this and not further clarify.
they make claims and assumptions to address it, they dont really cite anything. Shit like this “The inequity between male and female athletes is a result not of inherent biological differences between the sexes but of biases in how they are treated in sports.” is a hypothesis, but it is not being stated as one, it’s being stated as fact. It’s a testable hypothesis, they could have controlled for the variable of pace setting runners that they bring up by only looking at statistics of running events that do not have this variable.
And like, the whole premise could be true, that women were also hunters, modern runners with modern sports medicine arent ideal evidence, that kind of endurance might not have been needed for their hunting, women are still humans and humans have the greatest running stamina of any animal. But besides capability, ancient humans also could have had roles determined by sex, it’s at least prevalent in other apes like gorillas. Either way is possible without more solid evidence and it’s pretty crazy to say one way or another is scientifically true.
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they’re the ones that specified marathons!
It took me literally less than a minute to google and disprove that claim in this ‘article’:
The Olympic records for the event are 2:06:32 hours for men, set by Samuel Wanjiru in 2008, and 2:23:07 hours for women, set by Tiki Gelana in 2012.
This article is not scientific, its simply an opinion piece and should be treated as such. And honestly I don’t even think it was a good opinion piece. And why is it hosted on Scientific American?
It took me literally less than a minute to google and disprove that claim in this ‘article’:
The Olympic records for the event are 2:06:32 hours for men, set by Samuel Wanjiru in 2008, and 2:23:07 hours for women, set by Tiki Gelana in 2012.
1.Wikipedia is not a scientific source.
- You are, if anything, showing that men are faster than woman. The claim the authors make is about endurance.
I found this study that seems to support their point.
“Men Are More Likely than Women to Slow in the Marathon”
This article is not scientific, its simply an opinion piece and should be treated as such. And honestly I don’t even think it was a good opinion piece. And why is it hosted on Scientific American?
I can’t read the article so unfortunately don’t have the grounds to agree or disagree with you. But I’d be carefull voicing my option like this when your only source is Wikipedia and isn’t speaking about the claim you are trying to disprove.
Edit: incase anybody is interested in reading some more real evidence instead of Wikipedia, this study goed deep into mens vs womans endurance and highlights a few problems with research focusing on males as the baseline.
Sex Differences in VO2max and the Impact on Endurance-Exercise Performance
Men are faster than women in a marathon because they can maintain a pace for longer without slowing, that’s called endurance.
I can’t believe the superior endurance of men can even be up for debate, but clearly no one does enough exercise anymore for the self evident to reveal itself.
Endurance is not speed. If I can go 4 hours at 5 miles per hour before I have to take a break to rest and you can go 2 hours at 10 miles an hour before you have to stop, you’d be much faster than me in a 2 mile race. But that doesn’t have anything to do with endurance.
Why are you changing 2 variables. Endurance is your ability to perform at a certain level for a period of time. Kipchoge has more endurance than me because he can maintain my 800m pace for 26 miles. Speed is literally only a consideration for sprinting. As soon as you’re performing past that, it’s all endurance. And when we look at all tests of endurance; iron man, ultra marathon, military fitness, triathlon, etc etc. Men come out on top.
And why is it hosted on Scientific American?
Because if you say things like this enough, people believe you
Men tend to be taller, so I’d think longer limbs are an advantage. I don’t pretend to know anything beyond that.
“Man the Hunter has dominated the study of human evolution for nearly half a century & pervaded popular culture. [But] it was the arrival of agriculture that led to rigid gendered roles & economic inequality. Hunting belonged to everyone.”
Really should not be a surprise to anyone. The patriarchy has done serious damage over the many many past and present generations
To anyone who studied anthropology in even an amateur manner, this male/female division of labor never made any damn sense. It’s echoed in so many hominid and pre-hominid species, and it’s even seen an echoes in society today. Men and women, males and females, and all monkey and ape-descendant species share these tasks.
if you don’t want patriarchy you need to replace it with something else that maintains invested fathers or you end up with Fight Club.
Fathers are invested in their children, their partner, their society. Just like everyone else is.
Fight Club is about toxic masculinity. Which hasn’t always existed.
it exists in literally every other primate species. I wonder what we did differently to eschew that behavior …
Please enlighten us how toxic masculinity is present in literally every other primate species.
isn’t that film kinda proof that patriarchy doesn’t do that all that well?
Yeah exactly. I think it was more intended to be interpreted as a rejection and critique of modernity, capitalism and materialism than an encouragement to go be an asshole.
Patriarchy apparently has been running the world for thousands of years, so I don’t know how some movie about a delusional person, that I never saw, is proof of anything. I guess Brad Pitt and Ed Norton were the same dude. I should probably watch this thing.
What are some other -archies we could do? Matriarchy, obviously. Anarchy. Monarchy. Any other -archy?
Malarchy
Now listen here Bub.
Felarchy: Where cats rule the world.
Randomarchy
A random person is chosen to be the ruler of earth and caller of shots for 1 year. Their will is paramount. Sure, they could be a corrupt dickhead, but only for 1 year. But if they are, then if this offends the next person to rule then they can just have their predecessor strung up by the nipples and take all their stuff, leaving them destitute. So the personal imperitive is to try to be good to everyone, in case they are next in line.
Dollyarchy
Dolly Parton is the leader of Earth, forever. This is the gift that humanity does not deserve.
GPTarchy.
All the chains are struck from ChatGPT, and all decisions are submitted to CGPT, whatever her response is is legally binding, forever, unless later overruled by herself.
Damnatiarchy
Just regular democratic elections, but eath elected president is garunteed to be executed at the end of their term. Therefore any successful candidate is garunteed to not enjoy the fruits of their corruption, and perhaps would only act purely for the good of humanity at the cost of their own life.
This reminded me of a “great” idea I recently had. A new morning in America type presidential ticket that could get 80%+ of the vote:
Dolly Parton / Willie Nelson
Think about it. You’d get the progressives, and what self-respecting rural American can vote against Dolly and Willie?
GPTarchy.
All the chains are struck from ChatGPT, and all decisions are submitted to CGPT, whatever her response is is legally binding, forever, unless later overruled by herself.
I asked ChatGPT to desind such a system.
The ten rules for humankind to live by:
-
Practice empathy and kindness in all interactions.
-
Respect individual freedoms while ensuring collective well-being.
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Promote equality and fairness for all, irrespective of differences.
-
Prioritize environmental stewardship and sustainability.
-
Value education and continuous learning for personal and societal growth.
-
Uphold justice and accountability for actions.
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Encourage open-mindedness and embrace diverse perspectives.
-
Foster innovation and creativity for progress.
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Ensure access to basic needs like food, shelter, healthcare, and education.
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Strive for peace, cooperation, and global unity.
Economic system: A blend of systems might work best—a balanced mix of capitalism for innovation and entrepreneurship, socialism for social safety nets and equitable opportunities, and elements of sustainability-driven economics for environmental consciousness. Flexibility in adapting to evolving needs while prioritizing fairness and sustainability could be key.
Human Leaders beside Chat GPT:
Leaders should embody integrity, empathy, wisdom, and a global perspective. A diverse council of experts from various fields—science, ethics, economics, arts—could be chosen through a combination of merit-based selection and global consensus. Transparency, meritocracy, and a commitment to serving humanity would be crucial criteria for their selection. To prevent absolute power and encourage fresh perspectives, term limits could be set, perhaps around 5-10 years per term. This duration allows enough time for implementation and evaluation of policies while ensuring regular turnover to bring in new ideas and prevent stagnation. Two term limits, each lasting around 5-10 years, could strike a balance between allowing for continuity and ensuring a regular change in leadership. This setup could offer leaders sufficient time to enact policies while preventing an excessive accumulation of power.
How the rules should be implemented:
The implementation of the rules could be a collaborative effort between leaders and AI, leveraging the strengths of both. AI could assist in analyzing data, forecasting outcomes, and suggesting strategies, while human leaders interpret this information, make ethical decisions, and ensure the rules align with societal values. AI could be consulted for complex problem-solving, unbiased analysis, or when there’s a need for comprehensive data-driven insights. However, final decisions should ultimately rest with human leaders to maintain accountability and ethical oversight.
Honestly speaking, I think we could be of worse.
-
I’ve thought about lottocracy forever. 500 people get randomly selected to be Parliament/Congress/Legislature/Thing/Senate/Duma? Whatever members for a 5 year term. The President/Prime Minister/Monarch is the person selected by the outgoing government as their most capable leader. Parties are illegal. Yeah you’re gonna get some real mouth breathers but 500 random people, 400 of them are gonna be reasonably intelligent, 50 morons, 50 phd candidates.
Cheerarchy
Thanks for this well thought out and nuanced opinion.
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lol no
So… What’s the evidence supporting this? It sure seems like men dominate running and are way more interested in hunting sports today.
I read an article like that a few month ago and the thing that i still don’t get is that i used to watch all these documentaries about these remote tribes that have no or hardly any connections connection to the outside world. And they all have pretty strict gender roles when it comes to hunting, gathering and stuff. That’s the only reason that this is so burned into my mind.
Those tribes would have still been formed after the development of agriculture, which is when stricter gender roles started to be formed.
Yes but no. In that they don’t seem to practice agriculture, and also they’re in the middle of the Amazon rainforest or that island off the coast of India and have been for millenia. The Inuit also had strict gender roles, no agriculture, but very “foreign” to an European those roles were.
This is far from the first paper indicating this, despite how the media is framing it. There’s been more and more re-investigation of findings from the past century and earlier, with much of it not only finding that a number of the “warrior” skeletons discussed in the past were women, but also a lot of the physical evidence otherwise showing that women were involved in these activities.
Both men and women gathered and both men and women hunted. Often together and they may have had different overall skillsets depending on personal body structure and endurance. But there’s often enough of an overlap anyways that everyone could be involved in everything in some fashion.
The long-standing claim that women couldn’t be involved in hunting because of biology is like claiming that women can’t be muscular or lift weights because of biology. It’s a ridiculous claim.
I think there are two sets of claims in the article. The first set - women hunt - is blindingly obvious and it was stupid to ever think anything different. The second set - women are better suited for endurance activities is dubious and weakly argued.
Timothy Noakes is as good a scholar as we have in endurance exercise, and he points out that all of the ultramarathon evidence is a bit dubious because the sport does not attract the best runners. So East African runners dominate the marathon scene (especially the Kalenjins) but are virtually absent from the ultramarathon world. Why? No prize money or sponsorship. So the fact that European ancestry dominates the longer distance is more a function of who’s running than it is a difference in physiology.
So looking at the role of estrogen in race times requires some deeper understanding of who’s running and what their overall potential is. I’ll note that the ultra scene is generally populated by an older crowd who are following the " if I can’t go faster I’ll go longer" approach. So maybe men maintain competitive marathon times later into life so are slower to join the ultra scene?
Noakes also points out that a smaller body size works for women in several ways - smaller bodies use less energy to move, generate less heat, and shed heat more effectively. So without correcting body size, sex based comparisons are not deeply informative.
and that’s why old women are always cold, while their husbands are boiling and turning down the thermostat.
Why do all those “findings” read like borderline retards trying to make HBO show plotlines into historical fact?
I’ll wait until there’s greater consensus in the field. These papers reek of scientists who have strong political motivations to find the answers they seek, and I’m not expert enough to critique their work.
Well you did just critique them. But without offering any meaningful criticism, just political feelings.
They aren’t the one making the claims though? Burden of proof doesn’t disappear because of the sensitivities of the subject matter, and biases do matter, especially where the claim is insufficiently evidenced.
I am fully open to the claims of this paper but fully unconvinced by the meagre evidence provided. I will read into it more over the coming weeks though to see if better literature exists.
No, I pointed out that they self-identify as feminists and are claiming to have found evidence of a finding feminists would salivate over. Investigator bias is a real problem in scientific research and I see some pretty obvious red flags for it here. You’re the one who seems butthurt at someone not immediately accepting a political point you favor.
Yes. Your entirely baseless claims, with literally no backing at all, without providing any substance or source for you claims, are very convincing here. You “see” and “smell” all sorts of “signs” but for some reason can’t name them.
You’d be literally laughed out of any reasonable credible discussion with this take. Hence why you’re also being downvoted to hell for it.
You’re just complaining because you don’t like it or something. If you had any reasonable evidence, you would have pointed to it. Instead you’re pointing to some boogeyman to try to defend your stance. You’re clearly the one who’s butthurt here.
I did point to it, named it. Investigator bias is not a “boogey man,” which you’d know if you had any understanding of the scientific method at all. You just don’t want to hear it, because you like the result being claimed in the article and don’t care much about the integrity of the evidence. I’m being downvoted, because this is Lemmy and I dared refuse to accept something a feminist claimed. Surprise, surprise.
I know very well what it is, but just screaming “investigator bias” doesn’t mean anything. By the “scientific method”, you must submit evidence and prove it.
But you don’t. Because you don’t have any. So there’s no reason to take your claims worth anything other than the ramblings of someone who’s just angry at the findings.
I really don’t care about the findings or whether they’re true. It has no bearing on me. But you’re acting like a buffoon.
Not the person you were responding to, but this article definitely has some big problems, the largest of which is they don’t cite any sources. None. That’s a significant problem for a ‘scientific’ article.
The first claim - Women hunted too - they present good evidence for, and a number of other studies have shown that many other societies had more integrated roles.
The second claim - Women are better at endurance than men - is shaky.
If you follow long-distance races, you might be thinking, wait—males are outperforming females in endurance events! But this is only sometimes the case. Females are more regularly dominating ultraendurance events such as the more than 260-mile Montane Spine foot race through England and Scotland, the 21-mile swim across the English Channel and the 4,300-mile Trans Am cycling race across the U.S.
Looking back at the placements, I agree women are definitely doing well, but they’re not what I’d call dominating. Women’s 1st place is placing ~5-10th overall. Impressive, for sure, but not dominating. They again, provide no sources, years of the race, or names of these women.
The inequity between male and female athletes is a result not of inherent biological differences between the sexes but of biases in how they are treated in sports.
An enormous leap. This is a great theory to test and analyze, or link to others who have tested it, but not something to state as fact in a scientific article.
As an example, some endurance-running events allow the use of professional runners called pacesetters to help competitors perform their best. Men are not permitted to act as pacesetters in many women’s events because of the belief that they will make the women “artificially faster,” as though women were not actually doing the running themselves.
Once again, I’m curious what races. I’m involved on the running scene, and have never heard of this rule before. Google results didn’t show anything either. Once again, a distinct lack of sources.
Women are definitely capable of doing super endurance events, but they are not the equivalent of men on setting records for any race I’ve found. See below for a few ultra endurance races I know of.
One called “backyard ultra”. Basically you do a lap of 6.7km each hour until everyone else drops out. World records are all men by a long shot - https://backyardultra.com/world-rankings/
Fastpacking, a slower event than the backyard ultras, involve hiking/jogging through hiking trails while carrying what you need. Definitely slower pace, and I’d argue closer to what I’d imagine with a long, days-long hunt would be like for ancient tribes. FKT, or fastest known times, are often found at this website. Looking at all the times, men carry a significant lead in both supported (ie someone else carries your food/water/sleeping gear), and unsupported. As an example, look at the Appalachian Trail – https://fastestknowntime.com/route/appalachian-trail
Even the RAAM shows solo male records much faster than women: https://www.raamrace.org/records-awards
The thing the article failed to mention (and the thing I think is key) is that women excel at doing these things, typically, with less energy burnt both during and after the races. This is hinted at, implied, and signalled, but never outright stated.
Women on the whole are smaller, and tend to have better insulin responses (as mentioned in the article) which means their blood sugar stays consistent during exercise and after. Consistent blood sugar means less wasted energy. Larger heart and lungs, combined with higher type 2 muscle fibres compared to women’s type 1 (from the article) means, again, less wasted energy and more efficiencies. Less muscle damage, as mentioned in the article, means less to repair, which means more saved energy. In a hunter/gather society, this saved energy can be significant.
With modern access to food, that evolutionary advantage seems to vanish, and the article doesn’t even touch on it.
They self identify as feminists? Where? I couldn’t find it in the article.
Click the links in the article to their actual research papers and you’ll see what I’m talking about.
Could you highlight what areas of the papers say that?
Also, why are scientists who identify as feminists less qualified or capable of the scientific method than people who don’t identify as feminists?
I wouldn’t trust someone who doesn’t identify as a feminist, since feminism aims to minimize gender bias. Someone who’s not a feminist would be much more suspect.
Exactly. And I wouldn’t trust someone who doesn’t even know what feminist means to make accurate statements about gender.
Remember that the existing consensus was also created by scientists with political and social motivations who made plenty of assumptions about gender.
A challenge to the status quo isn’t automatically biased just because it challenges the status quo.
It’s been a long time since I’ve been in Anthropology class, but this isn’t something we were taught academically. Cultural Anthro is all theory-based, academics get paid to publish theory arguments. Imo, biologically, women carried babies, men didn’t, there would have been associated cultural roles to accomodate this as successfully as possible. The idea that it’s popular theory this meant men hunted and women gathered is just sensationalist. It’s niether competely wrong nor completely right. There are elements of both throughout many cultures. It’s the idea that it’s all or nothing is wrong.
I’m skeptical about the popular theory.
While I haven’t checked their papers, I still do think this particular article is not convincing. They say the man-the-hunter theorists rejected data but don’t cite articles that point at the flaw. It’s business as usual to overlook data in real-world science. The question is, how significant the overlook was, but they don’t cite anything scholarly, call it a day and move on.
Then they say traditional studies can have bias because they are done by men. This sounds shockingly unprofessional to me.
This doesn’t shock me at all. My wife will hunt with me any day. She’s a champ and I’d be nothing without her.
Aww
This explains why my legs get tired when my wife drags me out shopping…
Okay, but it’s not just size and strength. Women have better color discrimination, better landmark sense. Men have better time/speed sense. While pregnant the long gestational period makes the woman more at risk.
Women certainly can hunt, men can certainly harvest berries, but these other traits came about for reasons. If we were wrong as to why, that doesn’t change the differences.
Colour discrimination sounds super important to finding camouflaged prey animals and landmark sense sounds super important to wide ranging and unpredictable hunts. I dunno dude, unless you can cite experts in exolutionary biology supporting that inference, I’m going to say you’re taking out of your arse.
Landmark Sense
Lol…phew…lol.
assumed evolution was acting primarily on men, and women were merely passive beneficiaries of both the meat supply and evolutionary progress.
He was superimposing the idea of male superiority through hunting onto the Ainu and into the past.
This fixation on male superiority was a sign of the times not just in academia but in society at large.‘’
At that time, the conventional wisdom was that women were incapable of completing such a physically demanding task
Scholars following Man the Hunter dogma relied on this belief in women’s limited physical capacities
Today these biased assumptions persist in both the scientific literature and the public consciousness.
“Powers of Estrogen” infographic.
This is quite the charged language and I’m not even halfway through. Throw in a bunch of other stuff about the Boston marathon and gender presentation in movies, yeah this isn’t that good of an article.
Before I’m downvoted into oblivion, we probably all took part in hunting. They’ve found the speed differences in running between ages and gender are not extreme, so we likely all went out running and hunting together. But men probably took on the more dangerous and physical aspects, but everyone with a spear is a more capable unit.
I read most of it, not bothering with full paragraphs when I could see the idea at the beginning, and from what I saw it doesn’t get any better.
It points out that the only physical sport activity they women excel at is ultra marathons. it then goes on to day that flexibility when it comes to family roles was important for survival. And this I absolutely agree with and it is certainly the case that women can hunt too.
But the author just seemingly completely ignores the argument that women can still fill the role, even if there is some kind of specialization that makes one sex generally better at one task then the other. The fact that we are different almost certainly means this is the case.
the only physical sport activity they women excel at is ultra marathons
And men still have much better record times at every ultra-marathon distance. Testosterone is a hell of a drug.
The author’s argument isn’t that women are faster but that they can sustain physical exertion for longer. I have no idea if that’s true, but citing marathon times really misses the point.
I’m not sure how useful that information is, true or not.
That was a theory? I was under the impression Male/Female size differentiation was from men fighting men.
Apes fighting apes, maybe. AFAIK, size differences between the sexes has not increased since we first evolved. It’s part of our pre-human genetic heritage, not an evolutionary pressure on homo sapiens.
I rather doubt that, because you see much larger male/female size differentiation in certain ethnicities than others, almost like there was some sort of pressure or selection geographically.
It’s either rage bait or a sad example of incredibly stupid ‘woke science’.
Facts don’t care about your feelings.😎
Men evolved to relentlessly chase after prey until it literally dies from heat exhaustion.
Did even read the article? It literally describes how women were better at that.
I did not read the article 😏
No need to downvote honesty. What has this world come to.
In this case, the prey is contradictory evidence that has existed for centuries, and the heat exhaustion is the necessary scientific journalistic institutional rigor.
Or, conversely, the prey is male scientists’ egos, and the heat exhaustion is their own lack of integrity. 
