I have a theory that Masters has more males than females is because high school and college programs in the past spent their time on male swimmers. I remember my high school having only distances like 25 yard butterfly and the 50's of the other strokes and only the 100 for freestyle and IM. This was up to my sophmore year. And at the Jr year, the girls finally had 200 yard Im and 500 yard freestyle and the 100's of the other strokes like the boys. Also, I remember that the community college workout for women was a lot less yardage than that for guys. The California community college had the 100 and 50 distances for women and the 100 and 200 yard distances for men. The women did vote to keep the sprints and California community college is the only college system with the 50 sprints for other strokes besides freestyle. Anyways, college scohlorships for women came available starting mainly with the 1970's in swimming. Now at the age group level for USA Swimming girls outnumber boys. So in the future masters swimming will probably end up with more women.
Originally posted by cinc310
There was a poll that showed most master swimmers under 50 years old had some previous swim background.
This poll was nonscientific, and no meaningful conclusions can be drawn from it. A poll that you put out there and ask people to respond to is biased from the start. It's been my observation that most of the people who participate in this forum are competitive swimmers, so the results of a poll that they respond to is going to show that most of them were competitive swimmers. The only way you could get a true feel for what percentage of Masters swimmers participated in college or age-group swimming is to send out a survey to a random sample.
I agree with Emmett that most USMS swimmers do NOT come from a competitive background. My own team would back this up. Although we have some very good former college swimmers (and even one person who went to the Olympic trials in 1992, 1996, and 2000), most of our swimmers never swam in any sort of organized program before they joined USMS.
As for whether women have been discriminated against in the past: USMS is one of the LEAST discriminatory organizations out there. And good for us! Maybe there once was some inequity in the types of events that girls were allowed to swim (it wasn't the case where I grew up, but I was in Tennessee, not Southern California), but that is a thing of the past (except for the fact that women still don't swim the 1500 at the Olympics--but I think that may change by 2004?). The same events are available to women as to men in USMS. I think the main reason why there are fewer women in USMS is that until the last few decades, women were not encouraged to participate in sports, period. I know my coach lettered in CHEERLEADING when she was in college because that was the only option available to her. And she's now a world-class triathlete in the 65-69 age group. The women who came of age in the days before Title IX, who were courageous enough to compete when it wasn't considered socially acceptable, are rare indeed. I bet if you analyzed the membership of USMS, you would find that in the younger age groups we're closer to equal numbers of men and women. It's in the older age groups (and unfortunately, at 45, I'm in one of those older age groups!) that the discrepancy arises.
Originally posted by cinc310
There was a poll that showed most master swimmers under 50 years old had some previous swim background.
This poll was nonscientific, and no meaningful conclusions can be drawn from it. A poll that you put out there and ask people to respond to is biased from the start. It's been my observation that most of the people who participate in this forum are competitive swimmers, so the results of a poll that they respond to is going to show that most of them were competitive swimmers. The only way you could get a true feel for what percentage of Masters swimmers participated in college or age-group swimming is to send out a survey to a random sample.
I agree with Emmett that most USMS swimmers do NOT come from a competitive background. My own team would back this up. Although we have some very good former college swimmers (and even one person who went to the Olympic trials in 1992, 1996, and 2000), most of our swimmers never swam in any sort of organized program before they joined USMS.
As for whether women have been discriminated against in the past: USMS is one of the LEAST discriminatory organizations out there. And good for us! Maybe there once was some inequity in the types of events that girls were allowed to swim (it wasn't the case where I grew up, but I was in Tennessee, not Southern California), but that is a thing of the past (except for the fact that women still don't swim the 1500 at the Olympics--but I think that may change by 2004?). The same events are available to women as to men in USMS. I think the main reason why there are fewer women in USMS is that until the last few decades, women were not encouraged to participate in sports, period. I know my coach lettered in CHEERLEADING when she was in college because that was the only option available to her. And she's now a world-class triathlete in the 65-69 age group. The women who came of age in the days before Title IX, who were courageous enough to compete when it wasn't considered socially acceptable, are rare indeed. I bet if you analyzed the membership of USMS, you would find that in the younger age groups we're closer to equal numbers of men and women. It's in the older age groups (and unfortunately, at 45, I'm in one of those older age groups!) that the discrepancy arises.
