If you make something tilted against group X, group X will not look very good in the distribution of performance.
If those people in group X participate at a lower rate as a result, group X will look even worse in the distribution of performance. You'll be selecting the best from a much smaller population.
I do think there's some merit in the argument that many athletic events have been developed to showcase and compare male athletic capability. (Of course, a few are the opposite!)
To the opposite point: the reply says "women are failing cause the event design is biased" and also "women could do perfectly well if not for society making them not play"
Which one is it. If society didn't hold back women, would they win or not? Arg 1 says no, arg 2 says yes.
If the event were fairly constructed, arg 1 says they'd win, arg 2 says they still wouldn't.
So you've identified two possible problems; if the first is true (events are inherently biased) that completely proves that social discrimination is irrelevant (because the event design is so sexist women can never win)
If the second is true (women only lose because society holds them back) then the claim that the events are inherently biased (enough to totally prevent female wins) has to be false because either they can or can't win ex social bias. Qed either claim being true forces the other to be false, the args are contradictory.
EDIT: yes, I may be falsely thinking point-wise rather than distributionally. Both of the factors you mention do push women out further in the distribution of placements
> EDIT: yes, I may be falsely thinking point-wise rather than distributionally. Both of the factors you mention do push women out further in the distribution of placements
Even pointwise they are complementary arguments. When something is biased against you, you are less likely to participate. When less people like you are present in an activity, it's even harder. When there's fewer people like you around, the rules may tilt even farther away from being good for you. These effects all compound and reinforce each other.
Why have you locked off the easy complimentary answers: "women generally are smart enough to know running 100 miles at once isn't that useful" or "women on average have more important things to do". Nobody crows how men also have the largest Warhammer figurine collections and the largest trains sets due to sexism. Women just have different and generally more reasonable interests.
Why would someone trap themselves in an ideology which depends on believing that women are physically equal to men when men are obviously bigger, stronger, more insanely competitive and dedicated to meaningless status games. That's not necessarily a plus.
Also you still haven't really explained why "run X miles from A to B" is a tilted contest. Yet "swim Y miles from France to England" (an event I believe women are somewhat better at than men?) isn't.
> Why have you locked off the easy complimentary answers: "women generally are smart enough to know running 100 miles at once isn't that useful" or "women on average have more important things to do".
I think you've not understood the argument; the difference between women and men narrows as distance increases. Women might even have an advantage on the longest comps if they participated at a greater rate-- that's the topic that started the subthread we're in.
They aren't.
If you make something tilted against group X, group X will not look very good in the distribution of performance.
If those people in group X participate at a lower rate as a result, group X will look even worse in the distribution of performance. You'll be selecting the best from a much smaller population.
I do think there's some merit in the argument that many athletic events have been developed to showcase and compare male athletic capability. (Of course, a few are the opposite!)