Just in time for Torino comes this highly engaging blog posting from Joe Clark in which he makes the seemingly sound argument that women are certainly big enough to play hockey with men. (Size, of course, does not necessarily connote power and aggression and skill, but I’ll leave that question to Joe Clark, and Michelle Wie, and others more qualified to answer.)
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Equal size most emphatically does NOT mean equal strength, when it comes to men and women.
Here are the records of the USA Powerlifting Federation (the leading steroid-tested organization in that sport) for men in the 165.25 pound/75 kg. class, chosen as one representing more or less ordinary-sized people:
Squat - 749 pounds
Deadlift - 710.75 pounds
Bench Press - 512.50 pounds
For women in the same weight class:
Squat - 479.50 pounds
Deadlift - 507 pounds
Bench Press - 314 pounds
You get the point.
— prosaI’ll also mention that women’s hockey does not permit checking.
I think women value their teeth more.
— SeansWOf course, hockey isn’t all about strength. Speed, and agility is as important. Powerlifting is almost unique in that it not only exclusively rewards strength over any other physical trait, but even only one subset of strength-related abilities.
— JanneMAt the risk of taking this more seriously than it is intended: So, where are they? The best female hockey players have a tremendous economic incentive to try to play in the NHL. A couple of goalies have indeed tried, with praiseworthy but negligible success (google Manon Rheaume). The same is true in professional baseball and basketball, where the comparable attempts have been even fewer and less successful (ditto Ila Borders). I am personally intrigued by the possibility that some day a female athlete will cross one of these boundaries; my thought is a singles-hitting second baseperson, for whom reaction time and co-ordination are overriding considerations. But documenting the obvious, that female athletes overlap in size with male athletes, gets us nowhere.
— Ken D.The big hurdle is the overwhelming testosterone-fuelled culture of most (all?) male team sports. I imagine few managers/coaches/etc would be willing to jeopardise their hard-won team spirit by introducing a confounding factor. Not to mention fears of sexual harassment suits. Extra change rooms. Female uniform designs. These things may not be such a problem at the top level (as money can mitigate them), but on the way up it’s hard to see them being solved sufficiently.
Until someone is brave enough to try it and succeed, we’ll never know, I suppose.
— daveslutzkinStephen, I wrote earlier this week elsewhere about this issue. The problem is not really if women could play with men, but whether women’s hockey should change to allowing body checks.
My opinion is that allowing body checks would incorporate a very different body form into the women’s hockey world, which would characteristically change the game significantly. It would be less about speed, and more about size. Like it or not, many of our women’s sports market themselves on sexual aspects, and women’s hockey is no different. The canadian team in particular is staffed by some very, very attractive women. Moving to a brand of women’s hockey that allowed checking would, well, change that. I guess that’s all I have to say on that topic.
I’ve been watching women’s hockey for a very long time, so I guess my opinion is pretty well-ingrained.
— tim in tampaStrength and other factors related to the body, and agility and other factors related to performance, are bona fide issues in considering whether or not a woman should play on an elite team. (Or a man.)
But any coach or scout will tell you there’s a malleable envelope of features that are considered before adding a player to a team. My data merely demonstrate that a broad declaration that wymmynz aren’t big enough to play in the NHL is unfounded. There may be other reasons pro or con.
— joeclarkA month or so ago the U.S. Olympic women’s hockey team played an exhibition game against a men’s team, and lost. More accurately, they played against a boys’ team, from Warroad High School in Minnesota. And the game was played under women’s no-checking rules.
Women do relatively better compared to men in events that emphasize endurance rather than explosive speed. The only athletic events in which women can outcompete men are a handful of esoteric, extreme endurance events, such as 100-mile ultramarathons and long-distance ocean swimming. On the Olympic level, you can see that the women’s records are a higher percentage of the men’s records, though still well behind, in the marathon (an endurance event) than in the 100-meter sprint (an explosive-speed event). And as my powerlifting comment makes clear, women are well behind men in strength events.
Getting back to hockey, it’s my impression that the sport places a premium on explosive power and to some extent strength, with endurance being a bit farther down the list. As such it is not the sort of sport in which women would find it easy to compete with men. And that’s not even taking into account the fact that women hockey players, no matter how experienced, have never had to deal with checking.
— prosaThe future of women’s hockey in international competition is in jeopardy. The truth is that the Canadian and American teams are excellent, but no other country has put up a challenge. How can you continue having a sport in the Olympics when two teams dominate the tournament year after year? In every other sport the athletes are pushed to their limits. In hockey the Canadians and Americans have to hold up so that they don’t completely blow away the competition.
If North America doesn’t create a professional league I think we can see the sport return to recreational status for women. However, I probably wouldn’t be a patron to such a league. I just can’t get excited about women’s sports.
— SeansWI’m pretty sure there were a couple of women who played for the Mighty Ducks back in ‘92. Wonder what ever happened to them.
— Dr. FunkSeansW (odd capitalization there), Finland has long fielded a viable elite women’s team.
prosa, note that there are, as stated repeatedly, numerous reasons why indvidual women would not be suitable for elite men’s hockey teams. Size categorically isn’t one of them. To repeat a common shibboleth, at the very least women could be goaltenders in the NHL. At the very least.
— joeclarkOther sports have been in the same boat as women’s hockey is now. Looking at the men’s curling world championship since 1959, you’d think that it was Canada and a few other people.
Out of 47 tournaments, Canada has won 29, Sweden 5, the US 4, Scotland 3, Norway 3, Switzerland 3. Last year, however, they’ve had to expand the field because there are now more countries like Japan and New Zealand who are putting forward serious teams.
Going back to hockey, remember when the USSR was the dominant hockey power? The 1972 Summit series and the 1986 series are remembered mostly because the good guys actually beat the Big Bad Russians.
As for women’s hockey itself, it’s interesting to look at how it has developed inside Canada. In the province I grew up in (New Brunswick), the majority of serious female hockey players were French-speaking. The reason was that ringette (like hockey, but played with a straight stick and a ring instead of a puck) was more popular in French-speaking areas, and that was the closest most girls got to an organized hockey-like sport. There was the odd English-speaking girl who played with boys (I grew up with one), but when women’s hockey started getting organized, by far the majority of players were French because of the ringette background.
Now that has changed so that there’s no significant difference.
— KeithM[...] UPDATE (2006.02.14) – The Freakonomics authors plugged me on ther Freakonomics blog. [...]
— ‘Chix with Stix’ redux – Le «blog personnel» de Joe ClarkI don’t understand the relevance of BMI as as the size proxy. For example, a 60″ 150 lb Female and a 66″ 180 lb male both have a BMI a bit over 29, yet they are hardly the same size. The overall larger hight of men will lead to a systematic bias with this measure.
— TartanBillExample to illustrate the height bias
from hockeydb.com
Darren Pang, 5′5″ 155 lbs BMI=25.8
Patrick Lalime, 6′2″ 185 lbs BMI =23.8
By conventional standards of size and weight, Pang was a very small man in the NHL, among the smallest goaltenders of modern times. By contrast, Patrick Lalime is generally considered to be a big goaltender. Yet Pang has a significantly larger BMI.
Similarly, using hockeydb stats, Wayne Gretzky outsizes Mario Lemieux 25.1 to 24.3 when compared using BMI.
— TartanBillA fit man and a fit woman with similar BMI’s will differ in body composition, with the woman almost always having a substantially higher body fat percentage and the man having relatively more lean body mass. This difference in body composition alone is enough to give the man an advantage in almost any sporting activity. Lean body mass helps with performance while body fat more or less just gets in the way.
— prosaBMI is the only algorithm I know about that does not involve a dunk test and skin calipers that attempts to average height and weight into a consistent value. It is indeed inadequate to address outlier cases. It does a good job of typical cases. If you’re really picky, look at the small number of BMIs that are nearly equally found in men and women in the assessment and start there.
It does seem as though people are more concerned with height than weight, which may fairly represent the NHL’s recent splurge of signing up giants but may not have much to do with skills in hockey. Remember, the small guys are in the league, too. Even on a height basis you can find comparable male and female players.
— joeclarkAnother factor to consider for women playing non-goalie positions in hockey, is a factor similar to the difference between Men’s college basketball and men’s pro-ball.
— jonEvery year there is at least one great college basketball player who everyone knows has no future in pro-ball, because his skill set doesn’t transfer to the pro game.
This happens quite often with “big” men in college. The average height is much less in college. When a player that is 6′7″ plays center in college he is not much smaller than the other centers so a higher skill level will allow him to dominate. In the pro’s he will most likely play small foward, a much more athletically demanding position. Christian Laetner and Cherokee Parks were both good examples of this. They were both very good to great college players on top teams in a top conference. Laetner wound up having a respectable career as a journeyman, Parks on the other had no career to speak of. This was because they were to small to play center in the pros and to slow to play small foward, their natural pro position.
I think some of the same may be in effect for women to switch to the mens game in hockey. The larger women may have the body mass, but they may not have the skill set to play the position they have played their whole life. I think if any non-goalies do make it, it will be a smallish, fast player that can compensate for a smaller size relative to others at the same position.
I’ll just focus on the size argument. BMI is not a useful metric for this purpose because while proportional to weight, it is inversely proportional to height squared. It is a useful tool to indicate proportion, under or over weight, but does not measure size. It is normal, not an outlier that two players of equal BMI be of very different sizes, one both significantly taller and heavier.
The male/female BMI analysis indicates only that the men tend toward greater mass for a given height. In isolation, BMI cannot determine if the higher BMI individuals possess more lean muscle or body fat.
— TartanBillPart of the reason that hockey was able to develop outside of Canada is that professionals from the NHL were often not allowed to compete in many international competitions. Each nation was able to develop their national programs with some real incentives. They had a chance at winning the top prizes. The talent pool became much deeper and the best players from around the world entered the NHL in the 80s and 90s.
When you look back at the old Canada Cups and other summit game series, you have to remember that they took place during the cold war. It didn’t really matter that there were so few teams competing in these series. You had the economic and military super powers in the Soviet Union and the U.S. competing with Canada that treats hockey as a religion. The political war met the cultural war in a way that Canada could be a player.
— SeansWYes. SeansW is interesting capitalization. Nobody likes to just call me Sean. They call me Seancy, Seanski, Seanorama, Seaner and many other things. I decided to add my last initial, but I didn’t just want to throw it in. I have always separated myself from my family name, so the S is just a separator.
— SeansWWomen simply are nowhere near as athletic as men. Comparing body sizes is irrelevant.
I went to a major DivisionI university, where our womens basketball team was a national powerhouse, usually ranked in the top 5. I had the opportunity on a regular basis to play with many of the girls at the campus gym. I’m a relativly good basketball player for a guy, but I had absolutely zero chance of ever playing mens college basketball. And yet I was far and away better than any of the women on our college team, including several that went on to the WNBA. The athletic gap between men and women is so large that to even consider a woman crossing over and playing almost any major mens sport is ridiculous.
— john.34I think the problem is that we are comparing how well women have done in sports that were designed for men. How well would men do in gymnastics? Men’s gymnastics don’t require the same combination of strength and flexibility. There are gymnastic events that have no male equivalent.
— SeansWOne thing to think about in this debate is to look at the consistently narrowing gap between men and women as athletes. Look at times in track and field events, as an example. While the top men are still well above the top women, the gap has narrowed consisderably. This portends a time when there will be women capable of competing on men’s teams.
Think about what a small percentage of the all the men’s marathoners in the world can beat the best women marathoners. Let alone what a tiny percentage of all the men in the world.
Ask the track coach at the University of Chicago if he would like to Jackie Joyner Kersee in her prime as a member of his men’s track and field team? I ran division III track and field and I know she would have been a valuable member of our team.
Consider Michaela Hutchinson, who just won the Alaska state wrestling championship at 103 pounds. She had a 41-4 record with 33 pins for the season.
Think about Michelle Wei. When she failed to make the cut in a PGA event it was taken by many as a sign that she should concentrate on playing the women’s game. What struck me was the question “How would the media react is a 15 year old boy came that close to making the cut in a PGA event?”
Yes, all of these women are statistical “outliers”, but all professional athletes are statistical outliers.
— mathkingjoeclark
If you still have the data, a more convincing way to compare the sizes would be to scatterplot weight v height for men and womeen enveloping the separate samples and the region in which the two groups overlap. The result would be a Venn diagram from which you could compute the fraction of each sample that falls within the overlap region. A large overlap would convincingly demonstrate that size per se is not an issue. A small overlap, on the other hand, would suggest that the size differences severly limit the available talent pool. Zero overlap seems unlikely but would demonstrate that size alone is a fully sufficient explanation.
— TartanBill