ABSTRACT

Imagine if H. G. Wells were to re-visit the late nineteenth century and advise the then fledgling organizations that were governing sports that, contrary to the wisdom of the day, women were eminently capable of competing with men. The organizations might have allowed women admission, but not in separate events. They might have stipulated that if women could compete in football, tennis, track, and all the other major sports, then they would have to take their chances against men. In one stroke women would have been transformed from spectators to competitors. Of course, they would have been beaten repeatedly, especially in events in which muscular strength counted. That much is certain. After all, training, diet, rehabilitation facilities and all the technologies that assist competitors today were just not available, nor even thought of at the end of the nineteenth century when Wells was writing

Still, it’s interesting to conjecture what sports would be like now. One answer to this is: no difference. Women will always come second and, usually, a very poor second to men. An alternative is: they are able to hold their own in virtually every sporting matchup in which raw physical strength is not the decisive factor. That’s most sports, of course. I have an answer to the question, but, to arrive at it, I need to explain the guiding logic.