This text questions why men are considered superior athletes to women in sports, and more specifically in long-distance running. We also wonder why we as a society feel the need to compare them. Men against The Women Challenge advertising campaign launched by Nike plus serves as a representative example for this text to see how society still values ​​male athletes more than female athletes. The author consulted the work of Robert Degner, who explains how men have experienced a longer predisposition to competitiveness. The author also participated in a conversation with Christine Wegner about her research on the statistics of female marathon runners. The number has been found to have plateaued and it has been speculated that this is caused by social norms that limit women from spending more time on the education they are currently using to raise children. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an original essayAnother thing that men must govern is the caption of the ad for the Men vs. Women challenge launched by Nike Plus (Gould) . This particular ad obviously supports men in the challenge. Another thing for men to govern. Should it intimidate women? Or empower men? Did Nike ever think that the ad might seem offensive? What exactly are they trying to accomplish? But above all, why do we make it a competition between men and women? That said, if society knows that there are limitations that have prevented women from being as physically capable as men, and, if male and female bodies are created differently, why does society continue to value male athletes as more capable and superior to others? athletes? My initial hypothesis is that because men have been playing sports for a much longer period of time than women, we tend to value them more than female athletes. The Nike Plus ad, which I'll analyze as a representative example, was part of a campaign originally to get more women to join Nike plus, an app that connects to your iPod or phone to track your mileage and pace. I chose to use this ad as a representative example because Nike is a pretty well-known company and is still ignoring gender equality for just one of its campaigns. Nike employees decided the best way to get women to join the app was to start a battle of the sexes. In the ad for the men's team there is a boy running wearing Nike running gear. He seems very focused. There are great white words in front of him that say "another thing for men to rule over." and then underneath in smaller letters are the words that say "join the men vs women challenge on nikeplus.com." He looks like he knows what he's doing, like he's an experienced runner (correct form, proper running gear, defined muscles, etc.). There was an announcement similar to that of men in support of women. There is an experienced, focused runner with words in front of her that say, “Women first. Men second.” It seems ironic that they chose to say women first because at no point in history have women dominated the sports. Men have a very different athletic background than women. The Olympics have been around for thousands of years and include running events. Only women were able to participate began competing in running events only at the 1928 Olympics (The History of Women's Running). A handful of women were inable to compete in the 800 meter race in 1928, however many of them collapsed at the end of the race, so running was banned until 1960. This seems really unfair because even though they were eventually allowed to run, they had not . I didn't get proper training or instruction on how to run the 800 meters. After that event it became a rule that women could not run more than 1.5 miles because they were physiologically incapable of running more than that. The marathon was not incorporated into the women's games until 1984, after a group of women fought long and hard to prove that they should have the right to run more than 1.5 miles (The History of Women's Running). Women haven't had enough time to adapt their bodies to their maximum potential because our history hasn't involved much physical activity. Why did men play sports while women didn't? Men, on the other hand, have had plenty of time to adapt their bodies to physical activity. Robert Deaner and some of his colleagues published a paper exploring the evidence that men had an evolutionary history of physical competition, hypothesizing that, as men engaged in greater physical activity, “men experienced a longer predisposition to be competitive, which has pushed them to be more interested in sport… Clubs have documented female participation in sport, but it has always been shown that men are more involved.” (Deaner) Although they documented women playing sports, they were not as competitive or involved in them as men were. Could this biological response have been influenced by the social norms of that time? Where do these social norms that influence women also drive competition? How did women's biology play a role in their athletic participation? Why was it acceptable for men to play sports while women stayed at home and took care of the children? Women are still evolving their bodies to be capable of peak athletic performance. Russell Pate and Jennifer O'Neill published an article on the progress made by women in the sport of marathon running. They looked at the trend of best marathon times for women over 30 years to see how they have changed. Women were found to have improved their marathon times by 15.6% over thirty years, while men's best marathon times have remained fairly constant over the past few decades. They also looked at the physiological differences between male and female runners. “Male runners had statistically significantly higher values ​​for height, weight, sum of skinfolds at 6 sites, V ?O2max and V ?E than female runners.” (Pate). These biological differences adapted over the centuries so that humans could run to get food or fight enemies. It's okay to compare males and females. However, a limit must be set when the comparison turns into a hierarchical comparison and a placing of women and men on a scale based on factors that should not be compared. This is why I found the Nike advert destructive to the work many people have dedicated their entire lives to for gender equality. Does being a mother mean that women's bodies are not physically capable of athletic performance because their bodies are capable of bearing children? It seems like we've made a lot of progress with feminism, but we still have a lot of work to do. Social norms that women and mothers are the primary caregivers of children have had an impact on the number of women participating in sports. Christine Wegner conducted a study on the number of women whorun full marathons and found that “While the percentage of women runners at every distance up to and including a half marathon has increased continuously over the past 10 years, the percentage of women participating in full marathons has reached a plateau since 2006, with women they still represent the minority in this distance, equal to 43%". (Wegner) Women represent the majority of half marathon runners today, equal to 61%. They suggested that women have found their place in running and have become more comfortable running half marathons. They go on and say, “The environmental filter that once precluded women from long-distance running appears to have shifted, shifting the barriers of exclusion, and now appears to apply only to longer race distances of 22 miles and beyond.” (Wegner) The article said that it is not difficult for women to start running initially, that we have jumped that hurdle, but it becomes difficult for women to increase the amount of time they spend training for races longer than the half marathon (Wegner ). They speculate that this is because it takes more time each day to train for a full marathon than most women use to care for their children. So have we really overridden social norms? Society viewed women solely as caregivers and nothing more. Their job was to stay at home, take care of the children and clean the house. Now, it is socially acceptable for women to run and compete, but they still have to devote their main priorities to caring for children, since they are mothers, but running is something they can do if they have free time. Men have less difficulty fitting into their schedules because they are not expected to care for their children as much as women. Another issue with society's hierarchy or gender is the pay scale for women compared to men. This article titled "Here's Why It's Okay for Female Athletes to Earn Less Than Men" by Shane Ferro discusses why it's okay for women to be paid less. It's because not as many people come to watch women's athletics. This specific article looked at soccer players, but this is common in most sports. The authors used “right” in the sense that what their sport does is relatively the same as what every athlete does. They went on to point out that what we really need to focus on is why, why are people less likely to go and watch women compete and invest less time and money in women's sporting events? “The real question isn't why female athletes get paid less. People should ask themselves why fans and sponsors are less interested in supporting women's sports – and that's what they should be outraged about.”(Ferro) Once again it all goes back to social norms that men's sports are dominant, the which somehow makes them more interesting. Why? Could this difference in pay scale discourage women from running? Could it also allow them to fight for their right to equal pay? If we know that our historical differences have led to different biological abilities, why are we still starting competitions between men and women? Who is it healthy for? Could it be potentially harmful to men too? Men also feel the pressure of the hierarchy we have created. But they don't worry about whether they will be able to compete in a sport, rather they worry about whether they will be able to keep up with the expectations that society has set for them as "fit males." When men see that women can beat them in a race they feel intimidated and embarrassed that a girl can beat them. This hierarchy has.