Obviously this won’t work for all sports, but things like football, track, soccer, it would allow for de-gendered team, even allowing athletes with the skills but not the genetically-endowed physical attributes to have a place to play.
Note: I know very little about sports and being on a sports team, so please point out anything that doesn’t make sense.
I’ve read multiple papers on this topic. I’m a 2000 rated player and have tutored girls in chess. This is an interest of mine.
There is a very large gap in performance. The research overall implies a complex variety of factors. This includes what you mentioned, along with other inequities. It also includes the fact that women players are roughly 11 years younger on average and therefore haven’t peaked yet, which will account for some.
But there is evidence that there is also an innate biological difference. Men score better on visuospatial intelligence tests when compared to women. Chess, especially at a high level, involves a lot of this type of thinking.
I’m not arguing that women are bad at chess. Humans are individuals and there are varying levels of players in both genders.
Just that if you look at the extremes (which the top chess players will be) you’re going to see a higher level of males even if we fixed all of the inequities currently influencing the gender gap in chess.
We don’t know if the 10x difference is 5% due to biology or 50% due to biology. But we know it’s a non zero number
Essentially I used it as an example in the wider context of why we have women’s leagues and men’s league in sports.