Women’s runners at the start of the 2024 Boston Marathon. It wasn’t until 1972 that women could officially participate in the competition.
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Myths about women in sports date back at least 2,800 years to the beginning of the Olympics, when women were not allowed to compete. Sports journalist Maggie Mertens said these myths “remain hard to shake.” For example, women weren’t allowed to run the Boston Marathon until 1972 – it was considered too long and physically taxing for them.
In her new book, Better, faster, further: How running is changing what we know about women (Published June 18), Mertens explores the misconceptions about female athletes and how women are using running to counter them.
Mertens said running “has been used for years to define women as inferior to men.” This has resulted in women receiving less compensation, opportunities, health support and recognition in sports than their male peers.
better faster further This is relevant reading as the Summer Olympics begin on July 26 in Paris. This year also marks the 40th anniversary of the Olympic women’s marathon. “I hope it adds a lot of historical context,” Mertens said, “and connects a lot of dots to the issues we see in women’s sports — inequality.”
Here are eight ways the world misjudges female runners and how they’re trying to make the sport their own.
1. Running poses a “threat” to women’s health and fertility
Even at the turn of the 20th century, the idea that a woman’s uterus might fall out if she exerted too much physical effort was not completely marginalized.
Mertens noted that “many doctors” believed that “women’s participation in competitive sports would ultimately harm the very thing that ‘made them women’—their fertility.” Issued in 1924 American Sports Review Claim: “National or international competition is a threat to women.”
Another doctor commissioned by the Women’s Track and Field Association to evaluate the safety of competitive running for women noted that even if female runners Appeared Done well, the results of exercise can end up being “very harmful to a girl’s health and natural functioning.”
Of course, it turns out just the opposite. For example: Girls need to exercise during their teenage years to promote bone health and prevent osteoporosis.
2. Women are slower than men
In the process of writing her book, Mertens realized: “Maybe the reason we see women in a certain way is because of stereotypes or stories that have been held for a long time.”
One of these stereotypes is that women are slower than men in every situation.
In many races the speed gap is closing. According to current world records, women run a mile 25 seconds slower than men, and women are only one second slower than men in the 100-meter race. Women’s champion Hellen Obiri leads more than a third of the professional men’s field at the 2023 Boston Marathon. When it comes to ultrarunning, women have proven that they can actually outrun men.
“When we talk about people and our physical abilities, we don’t need to constantly separate into two different parts,” Mertens writes.
On April 15, 2024, Kenyan runner Hellen Obiri crossed the finish line and won the first place in the women’s race of the Boston Marathon.
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3. 800 meters—let alone a mile—is too far for women
In 1928, the longest race a woman could compete in was 800 meters – two laps around the track. But after that year’s Olympic women’s 800m race, false rumors spread that many runners had collapsed. As a result, the women’s 800m was canceled and was not reinstated until 1960, while the 1500m was not added until 1972.
One major disadvantage of removing a competition from international sport is that the world record for that distance simply does not exist. So when British runner Diane Leather broke the five-minute mile in 1954, she didn’t get an official world record because it was nothing.
Today, women have the opportunity to participate in all the same competitions as men. But Mertens reflects that one of the most surprising things she discovered in her research was “how much gatekeeping female runners are subjected to in terms of who they are and what they’re not allowed to try.”
4. Female marathon runners are a medical liability
The first woman to run the Boston Marathon shouldn’t be there. In 1966, Bobbi Gibb secretly entered a race but was turned down by the race director who did not want to take on “medical liability.” The race director claimed in Gibb’s rejected application that women were “biologically unable to run twenty-six miles.”
“To me, it’s pretty crazy,” Mertens said of this moment in history less than a century ago. “That was my mom’s generation. It’s shocking to think how much things have changed in one generation.
During the competition, Gibb wore Bermuda shorts and a hooded sweatshirt to hide her gender, and also wore a swimsuit—the sports bra hadn’t been invented yet. Her shoes gave her blisters. But she still became the first woman to complete the Boston Marathon, ahead of two-thirds of the men that year, with a time of 3 hours, 21 minutes and 40 seconds. In 1972, the Boston Marathon officially allowed women to compete.
In 2016, Bobbi Gibb crossed the finish line at the Boston Marathon, 50 years after she became the first woman to complete the race.
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5. Super? It’s also too far for women
Considering that women don’t perform well in the 800 meters, the mile or the marathon, it’s not surprising that women are also being eliminated in long-distance races. So when ultrarunning (defined as a race longer than a marathon) emerged in Britain in the mid-19th century, women were banned from participating.
It turns out, however, that this is a forum run by women Do More than men. Case in point: At the 2019 Spine Race, a brutal 268-mile race from England to Scotland held every January, winner Jasmin Paris was faster than any male competitor and even broke the route’s record 12 hours.
“It really shows that women have a lot of athletic abilities that are not as valued in some of the other sports that we focus more on,” Mertens said of women’s success in ultrarunning. “I love showing that our athleticism can reach its peak.”
6. The thinner a woman is when running, the faster she is
As Mertens writes, the misconception that “the thinner you are, the faster you run” is a dangerous misconception that arguably destroyed the likes of Leslie Heywood and Mary Decker The careers of female runners.
Based on this false belief, many runners are told to lose weight to improve performance, leading to compulsive dieting and training. “This becomes a very dangerous combination, especially for young female runners,” Mertens wrote.
What happens is that women, as well as teenage girls, don’t eat enough and overtrain, causing them to lose their periods, a condition called amenorrhea. As a result, these female athletes suffer from osteoporosis and are prone to fractures. Many people develop eating disorders.
Additionally, blame is often placed on a runner’s eating disorder and recurring injuries, rather than on a lack of or misinformation she received. Mertens explains that even today, misinformation persists for female runners about training and fueling, even though we fully understand the importance of properly fueling and maintaining a healthy weight.
7. Pregnancy signals the end of a female runner’s career
Mertens writes that doctors have long told women not to run during pregnancy, and pregnancy has long been seen as a career killer for competitive runners.
However, Paula Radcliffe won the New York City Marathon 10 months after giving birth. Ultrarunner Jasmin Paris pumps breast milk at the aid station during her winning ultramarathon. These are just a few examples of female runners proving they can continue to compete after giving birth.
“It’s such an inspiring moment right now,” Mertens said. “The number of women who have had children and are coming back postpartum is really exciting.” Especially because mothers participating in competitive running “were thought to be completely impossible for a long time.”
But there’s still a long way to go from viable sponsorship for women’s running to accusations that pregnancy is akin to blood doping due to the release of potentially performance-enhancing hormones in pregnant women’s bodies.
“This is definitely an area where we need more research,” Mertens said. There is more work to be done on how to best support female athletes during pregnancy and postpartum.
Paula Radcliffe celebrates winning the women’s race with her daughter Isla at the New York City Marathon on November 4, 2007.
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8. Women with high testosterone levels have an unfair advantage
One particularly memorable story in the book involves Ugandan runner Annet Negesa. After a blood test showed her testosterone levels were high, she was flown to France, where a group of white male doctors told her she would need surgery if she wanted to realize her dream of running in the Olympics.
Before the surgery, no one translated what was happening into Swahili. When Negesa woke up, she didn’t even know she had undergone a testicularectomy (removal of the internal testicles). Negsa, it turns out, is intersex and now can barely walk or stand, “let alone run.”
“I lost my career, I lost my [university] scholarship, I lost my income, and I can no longer help my family financially,” Negsa said. “I lost everything.”
Mertens said questioning the gender of female runners is neither new nor unusual, especially for women from the Southern Hemisphere and Africa. Since the 1920s, there have been concerns that some female athletes were men pretending to be women, or displayed masculine traits that would give them an unfair advantage.
In 1966, the European Athletics Championships decided that all female athletes would need to undergo gender testing. Over the years, their preferred methods have included visual inspections, gynecological exams, and chromosomal testing.
Yet all reviews are completely inconsistent with the historical record.
“I have yet to come across a single instance of a man impersonating a woman to win a women’s sports competition. ZERO,” Mertens wrote. However, from 1968 to 1999, “more than 10,000 women underwent gender testing at the Olympics.”
The reality is that testosterone levels fluctuate throughout a person’s life. For example, this level drops when a man is caring for a baby, while in a woman it actually rises during pregnancy.
“Why are we ignoring that these levels can change and that hormones are not binary?” Mertens asked. Whatever the answer to that question, Mertens’ study demonstrates the ridiculous amount of time and resources we invest in validating the gender of female runners—resources that could be used to support women’s advancement in sport.
Maya Silver is a freelance writer living in Utah.
