Proposal: Add Gender Sorting on the WCA Rankings

[KingTim96]

I understand what you are saying but I don't know if making it official would be a good idea. Seperating by gender would have the same effects (in my opinion) as separating by race would have. Just cause I'm African American, does that mean I don't have the same chances as Caucasian people do to get a WR? No not at all. The only thing that really separates the two groups, male and female cubers, is how many of us there are. Everybody has the potential to get a WR in my opinion. Some people just want it more than others so they practice harder and more often until they get it. I hope that made sense.

 

[BaMiao]

I agree with the conclusion here that official gender-based records are not a solution. However, I do find it troubling to see that female cubers are such a small minority within the community. It might be worthwhile to look into the reasons for this disparity and try to find other courses of action.

Perhaps the cause is somewhere along the lines with what is said about the relatively small number of women in STEM fields. Cubing in general is just thought of as a "boy's" activity, which discourages girls from finding an interest, maybe? Is there something we can do to change this?

 

[Stefan]

It might be worthwhile to look into the reasons for this disparity

Girls/women probably got better things to do than turning a toy all day long. They're actually the smart ones.

 

[ThomasJE]

Girls/women probably got better things to do than turning a toy all day long. They're actually the smart ones.

I do think that females have a higher IQ than males. By that reasoning, females should be the ones with all the world records.

I think it's all down to interest levels and that it is mainly males that have the interest.

 

[BaMiao]

Girls/women probably got better things to do than turning a toy all day long. They're actually the smart ones.

I do think that females have a higher IQ than males.

Why wife would agree with both of these sentiments.

 

[sneaklyfox]

Girls/women probably got better things to do than turning a toy all day long. They're actually the smart ones.

Lol... meaning girl cubers are the dumber specimens of their gender?

I actually thought of Waffle's point before I saw her post about having a ranking for different countries. It doesn't mean the citizens of one country is faster than another, but it would encourage more participation in countries where cubing is less popular. If people there feel it's not as difficult earning a NR, it is a motivator. Leaving the gender thing aside, we could even have ranking for province or state or city, for example. It just seems silly to go down that far, but nobody would think I felt I needed a handicap if I lived in the most popular cubing country, would they? People just get too touchy about gender, like they would if things were ranked according to race as well, because you can label people clearly. But it's harder to label every Canadian "patriotic" and every American "obnoxious" for example because there are all walks of people in those countries (and others).

You talk about my NR as if you don't have the same thing. You totally do. Why can't you go for NRs like everyone else?

You still haven't presented any reason to make a distinction for females other than the fact that there aren't very many of them.

I think her point was that you need a rankings by country in order to get a NR. If there was none and WR was the only thing that counted then you would not have a "NR" title at all. What was the reason WCA separated rankings by countries and continents besides convention?

But I understand why we can't have things like FWR or FNR... WCA would be seen as sexist, for one... and other reasons.

On the official WCA site though, I'd like to see the gender filter. I'd be happy enough with that.

Edit: Sorry for double posting.

 

[Noahaha]

I think her point was that you need a rankings by country in order to get a NR. If there was none and WR was the only thing that counted then you would not have a "NR" title at all. What was the reason WCA separated rankings by countries and continents besides convention?

But I understand why we can't have things like FWR or FNR... WCA would be seen as sexist, for one... and other reasons.

On the official WCA site though, I'd like to see the gender filter. I'd be happy enough with that.

Edit: Sorry for double posting.

Ah I see. I agree with you that there's no reason not to have a gender filter on the rankings page.

 

[qqwref]

I disagree. Cubing is simply not a sport where your gender could be a significant handicap. Speedcubing, in practice, requires mostly finger dexterity and various mental abilities. The mental abilities required to be a top-tier speedcuber are not nearly complex enough to get to the point where there may be intrinsic gender differences, and as we can see from music and typing, both men and women can reach world-class levels of finger dexterity. I do not want to send the signal that women simply cannot compete with the men - they can, and have, achieved amazing times. Honestly, the biggest thing holding back women's times is just that there are fewer of them.

Now many of you may think that cubing is such a fair sport and it does not matter whether you are male or female. Then I have one question, why is Cup Stacking separated by gender?

I have another question, why is cup stacking separated by age? They have a full dozen age brackets, most of which are very small, and it's a sport that, like cubing, is mainly based around finger dexterity and how much time you've put into it. It's really not the kind of sport where you can't expect a 16-year-old and a 17-year-old to fairly compete. I honestly think that cup stacking only has as many divisions as it does to make itself more popular. They divide the same event up many ways (2*12 = 24 per event!) so that many people can get attention or coverage for their "world records" and make the few actual events they have more exciting.

My other reason is I feel it would make more girls interested in cubing knowing they have official records to work for

This is a legitimate point; having female records would probably bring more girls into cubing. But in the end I think we would be better off creating an unofficial sub-ranking for women only. If we really separate the records, it'd only be fair to separate other things too, like competitions. And then we have to organize and give prizes for a separate female round of everything, a round which may only have a few people at a small local competition...

 

[elrog]

I do think that females have a higher IQ than males. By that reasoning, females should be the ones with all the world records.

I think it's all down to interest levels and that it is mainly males that have the interest.

IQ tests don't really prove much of anything. I do not think that women or men are smarter regardless of the area of intelligence you are referring to, just that women who can put more effort into their studies (I say this because some countries do not educate women) do put more effort into it on average than males do which makes it appear that women are smarter because they have higher IQs.

 

[kcl]

IQ tests don't really prove much of anything. I do not think that women or men are smarter regardless of the area of intelligence you are referring to, just that women who can put more effort into their studies (I say this because some countries do not educate women) do put more effort into it on average than males do which makes it appear that women are smarter because they have higher IQs.

Well, I think you're right. I highly doubt that Faz or Mats or many fast people have "Genius" IQ. Honestly IQ has very little to do with it like you said. What really matters is the dedication and natural skill of the cuber.

 

[sneaklyfox]

IQ tests only show a narrow view of things. People don't like making what could be called "sexist" comments, but it's easy to accept in athletics that men are generally stronger and faster than women (distinction made in many Olympic sports.) Even though I'm a woman, I believe it is generally men who are better at mathematics, science, engineering, etc. This is not to say there aren't exceptions, of course, and we should never label individuals just because of stereotype. This also isn't to say that men are "smarter" unless your definition of "smart" has to do with one of the topics I mentioned. Take multitasking, for example... most women are better at multitasking than men. And then there's things like... asking for directions. It's much faster to just ask someone and find out right away how to get somewhere than drive around in circles, staring at a map and adamantly declaring that one is not lost for a few hours before swallowing the ego and admitting any fault. And the girlfriend/wife sitting in the passenger seat is surely thinking this is "dumb". I'm just stating a stereotypical example here. Men and women just have different strengths and natural abilities. It's stupid not to admit that this is true, but we don't always know what all those are, especially when it comes to something as esoteric as cubing.

 

[Stefan]

I do think that females have a higher IQ than males. By that reasoning, females should be the ones with all the world records.

Apparently you understood the complete opposite of what I meant. Which was that not wasting so much time with a toy is a sign of being smart. So by that logic they shouldn't have all records, they should have *none*.

Lol... meaning girl cubers are the dumber specimens of their gender?

Um... well... oops, I guess I didn't fully think this through

 

[Tim Major]

How slow and at what times? How about right now? I know we occasionally have a problem with our current host, where all requests get a weird 30 seconds delay.

Slow as in: will not load results within 15 seconds so I retry, takes multiple retrys. Australian net isn't fast, but mine is extremely consistent, so unless other people haven't had this problem I THINK it isn't on my end. Hasn't happened within the last month, but used to happen every time I tried almost.

 

[sneaklyfox]

Apparently you understood the complete opposite of what I meant. Which was that not wasting so much time with a toy is a sign of being smart. So by that logic they shouldn't have all records, they should have *none*.

I think higher IQ is only one factor when it comes to speedcubing, but there are others. Meaning I don't think someone with low IQ has a good chance of doing well in speedcubing, but also that someone with high IQ may not do well in speedcubing either. Also, you can still be a fool but have high IQ. Like, don't most men find women impossible to understand? The truth is, you're too *dumb* to understand us.

Um... well... oops, I guess I didn't fully think this through

Heehee...

 

[Lucas Garron]

There are at least two ideas here:

- Add an option to the WCA results for viewing female rankings.
- Recognize female records like continental records.

I think the first one is reasonable, it just requires reasonable interest and someone to code it.
The second one requires some thought. In particular, we should first figure out what we *want* (Single out female cubers as special/significant? <ake them feel more welcome? Increase their visibility to encourage girls to become interested?), and base the choice on that.



On a slightly related note, I've always been bothered that the Regulations use male pronouns. We have a disclaimer, but I would like the Regulations to be gender-neutral, or at least not male-biased. It's hard to do this while keeping it easy to read for an international audience (i.e. no singular "they"/special pronouns/awkward "(s)he" or he/she constructs). The best I've managed to do is switch the default gender to female. If anyone has any good ideas, I'd love to hear them.
(If you're going to defend the continued use of "he" as the default, please read Hofstadter's "Person Paper on Purity in Language" before you post.)

 

[ryanj92]

But that doesn't change anything :/
Is the singular form of 'they' really that difficult to use/understand? Especially when 'the competitor', which is a neutral term, is what is dominantly used in the regulations anyway? It seems silly to me that we use a neutral term and then a gender-specific term to describe the competitors. That way, ALL genders are covered. Maybe this warrants a separate thread at this point, I dunno

On topic: I'd love to see rankings by gender. In this case, I would like to also see 'other' become a more valid choice.

 

[stoic]

Take multitasking, for example... most women are better at multitasking than men. And then there's things like... asking for directions. It's much faster to just ask someone and find out right away how to get somewhere than drive around in circles, staring at a map and adamantly declaring that one is not lost for a few hours before swallowing the ego and admitting any fault. And the girlfriend/wife sitting in the passenger seat is surely thinking this is "dumb". I'm just stating a stereotypical example here. Men and women just have different strengths and natural abilities. It's stupid not to admit that this is true, but we don't always know what all those are, especially when it comes to something as esoteric as cubing.

The driving/directions thing is hilariously true. (Although if you women could learn to read a map without turning it upside-down maybe you wouldn't get us men lost in the first place )
In our house we have the problem "why can't the men see what's in front of them" (especially when looking for something in the fridge).
I always liked the explanation that men are hunter-gatherers, used to tracking things at high speed from a distance (partly explains why we like sports so much) whereas women are evolved to protect their children from danger which may be close by which gives them greater spatial awareness.

 

[Hypocrism]

I would support this. In fact the universal tendency of men to be better on average at spatial reasoning than women, a trait immediately applicable to cubing, would make it immediately comparable to separating sport by gender, due to the same universal tendency of men to be stronger on average.

 

[~Adam~]

Proposal: Separate WCA Rankings Officially by Gender.

Take multitasking, for example... most women are better at multitasking than men.

Large studies have shown that the better you think you are at multitasking the more likely it is that you are bad at it.
Just something interesting I wanted to share, I'm not implying that men are better at it because women think they are =P
It's probably related to complacency.

Also, you can still be a fool but have high IQ.

Greetings!

 

[TimMc]

Is there any need to separate men and women in WCA events?

A filter that displays rankings based on gender is simple enough to implement. However, if we actually want to split NR's, CR's and WR's by gender fairly then men would have to compete in one 3x3 event while women compete in another 3x3 event.

If they're mixed up in the same round then how would you determine who goes through to the second round or final? Top 8 Men and Top 8 Women from the previous round?

If they're not mixed up then which event should be held first at a competition: Men's 3x3 or Women's 3x3?

If there are only a couple of women at the competition then would they only get to compete in one round? Would someone always come first because she's the only female competitor? Would prizes be distributed fairly between Men's 3x3 and Women's 3x3?

Would having a Women's 3x3 event result in more participation by women?

It'd be great if this split could somehow act as a catalyst to increase participation by women. On the other hand, could this completely crush women out of the sport due to the current lack of participation (i.e. not enough competitors to have more rounds; not as many people to compete against; feeling a bit more isolated if there are three women and fifty men at a competition)?

Tim.