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Pay difference between men and women in sport

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Pay difference between men and women in sport

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Sports need to engage "in the battle for gender balance and fairness", says UK Minister for Sport Helen Grant after a BBC Sport study into prize money found 30% of sports reward men more highly than women.

The biggest disparities in prize money were found in football, cricket, golf, darts, snooker and squash.

"There is a gap, it needs to be closed but it's not going to happen overnight. We do know that women's sport is very exciting, we know it can draw really big audiences but we need more media coverage and more commercial investment," Grant told BBC Sport.

"It's not just about the bottom line and profits and the return on investment which I believe they will get, it's also taking part in the battle for gender balance and fairness in the 21st century."

A total of 56 global sports were looked at in the extensive study. Out of 35 sports that pay prize money, 25 pay equally and 10 do not. Fourteen sports, including rugby union and hockey, do not pay any prize money at all. Five sports did not provide information for the investigation and men and women compete alongside each other in horse racing and equestrian.

Athletics, bowls, skating, marathons, shooting, tennis and volleyball have all paid equal prize money since before 2004.

In the past decade, nine more sports have starting doing so with five - diving, sailing, taekwondo, windsurfing and some cycling events - achieving equality in the past couple of years.

Grant was encouraged by the number of sports which do pay equal prize money adding: "In 70% of sports there is parity and that's great and that's what we want. But we also want the others moving in that direction too and I feel it will happen when the full potential of women's sport is seen and realised."

Female footballers are rewarded significantly less than their male counterparts.

For winning this year's World Cup in Brazil, Germany received more than £21m more than Japan's women did after they were crowned world champions in 2011.

This season's men's FA Cup winners, a competition watched in more than 120 countries, will secure £1.8m in prize money while the team who lift the Women's Cup will net £5,000 - the same amount as the winning semi-finalists of non-league competition the FA Vase.

The Football Association has said men's and women's football are incomparable, describing them as "polar opposites" in global reach.

Kelly Simmons, the FA's director of the national game and women's football, said: "The men's game is a huge multi-million pound industry so when you compare it to the women's game, which until three or four years ago was played by amateurs, the gulf is enormous.

"We are investing £12m in women's football this year but we want to direct that investment where we think it will have the biggest impact and at the moment we do not think that is in prize funds.

"However, we are reviewing it and are looking for a commercial partner to take the women's FA Cup to bigger audiences."

Women golfers can earn a handsome living on the LPGA Tour, with Michelle Wie taking home £452,000 this year for winning the women's US Open.

But the American's reward was considerably less than the £1m cheque received by 2014 US Open winner Martin Kaymer.

Ivan Peter Khodabakhsh, chief executive of the Ladies European Tour, said he was striving for parity in prize money.

"The current significant difference in the prize money between men's and women's golf cannot be justified, taking into consideration the competitiveness and quality of professional women's golf worldwide," he told BBC Sport.

But Khodabakhsh added that achieving equality in prize money would require "considerable effort" from governing bodies, corporations and the media.

In squash, Laura Massaro - the first English woman to hold world and British Open titles simultaneously - has been instrumental in bringing equal prize money to the British Nationals and increasing women's prize money for the British Open.

But for winning her world title, she received £16,300 less than the men's world champion Nick Matthew, who secured £28,600 when he won his third world crown in November 2013.

Andrew Shelley, chief executive of World Squash, said the sport's world championships would bring in equal prize money "soon".

"The tours are committed to equal prize money and, indeed, this was reinforced at the recent World Squash Federation conference," Shelley told BBC Sport.In this year's World Twenty20, Australia beat England in the women's final - and were paid £44,000 in prize money - just hours before Sri Lanka's men overcame India by six wickets for which they were rewarded £690,000.

The International Cricket Council told BBC Sport: "We take a more holistic approach to make sure the overall women's game will grow. There's been a 12-fold increase in funding over the last five years where we now invest $25m (£15.5m) in the women's game, compared with $2m (£1.2m) in the previous five years.

"That money will be spent on development, associate members and pumped back into the game. Everything is increasing, such as participation and media coverage. Who knows where the sport will be in 20 years' time? It's heading in the right direction."

Stacey Allaster - Women's Tennis Association chief executive
"It doesn't make any sense to me in 2014 that here we sit with other great female athletes not having a greater share of sponsorship and exposure in media, whether that be print or broadcast. We need a game changer here. There's way too much talk about it. We need people to lead and people to invest."

Tennis was the first sport to pay equal prize money when the US Open started doing so in 1973 after campaigning from Billie Jean King and eight other female tennis players.

Stacey Allaster, chief executive of the Women's Tennis Association, said: "The WTA is where we are today because we had strong leaders, like Billie Jean King, who advocated for equality and she got it done in 1973 at the US Open. It was Venus Williams who got us over the line with Wimbledon [getting equal pay in 2007].

"It's that combination of the athletes advocating for what's right, and then the administrators supporting them, creating the public awareness that more equality, and eradicating gender bias in sport, needs to happen."

In snooker and darts, women are allowed to enter and compete alongside men at world championships, provided they qualify. However they do also run separate women's championships, with the British Darts Organisation paying out £12,000 for the women's title and in snooker, Reanne Evans received £1,500 for winning the women's event this year.

The study, which looked at prize money only and does not include wages, bonuses or sponsorship, was commissioned before a conference on Thursday aimed at transforming sport for the benefit of females in the United Kingdom.

It is being delivered by the Department for Culture, Media and Sport and the Women's Sport and Fitness Foundation (WSFF), which is celebrating its 30th anniversary.

Ruth Holdaway, chief executive of WSFF, said: "We are encouraged that since 2013 a number of sports have taken the positive step towards prize money parity, and this shows that the momentum currently building behind women's sport is having an impact.

"It is, however, disappointing that in 2014 women still find themselves having to battle for equal reward in elite sport."

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Men get more prize money than women in 30% of sports

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Sports need to engage "in the battle for gender balance and fairness", says UK Minister for Sport Helen Grant after a BBC Sport study into prize money found 30% of sports reward men more highly than women. The biggest disparities in prize money were found in football, cricket, golf, darts, snooker and squash.

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Have a look at gender in equality in sport generally as well as in gymnastics

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A survey has revealed that the gender pay gap in sport is larger than one finds in politics, academia, business and medicine.

There is a sports body which publicly states its aim to 'achieve gender equity'. It also wants to make the sport of cricket more accessible for women and to provide them greater opportunities to become professionals. Many other teams/federations/organisations will claim to do so but the body in question went ahead with a historic financial commitment.

Cricket Australia now spends AUS$55.2 million on professional contracts for women cricketers, up from AUS$7.2 million. But it is an outlier.

This is just one of the facts which emerged from Sporting Intelligence's Global Sports Salaries Survey 2017. The website calls its latest report 'The Gender (In)Equality Issue'. That is putting it mildly. As the survey notes, the gender pay gap in sport is larger than one finds in politics, academia, business and medicine. Mind you, the report's data is largely derived from countries that generally do well on economic and social development indicators - Sweden, Germany, the US, Australia et al.

There are plenty of numbers which shed light on sport's inferior status but the sting lies here - "Space is no longer the final frontier. Gender equality in sport is. Female astronauts are almost 12 times more prevalent in their industry than professional female footballers." Fly me to the moon.

Basketball in the US is the most lucrative proposition for female sportspersons around the world. In the Women's National Basketball Association (WNBA), the average season pay in 2017 was US$ 74,759. Now, compare this to the best-paid men's league in the world - the National Basketball Association. On average, a male basketball athlete in the league earns $7,147,217; that's 96 times what a female professional would earn for a season.

Yet, it is not considered to be a problem. The simple argument goes that the male sport is far more popular and revenue generating. With corporate support always there for men's sport, why would Cricket Australia promote women's cricket? It does not make good business sense, we are told.

Another argument often presented is that female athletes just do not match up to their male counterparts. But women's tennis and WNBA have shown that significant interest exists in the game when appropriate pathways for players and marketing of the sport are in place. Without them, who could succeed? Popularity grows when the spotlight switches on. This summer's cricket World Cup final saw a TV viewership of 1.1 million in the UK, 400,000 more than who tuned in for the men's Champions Trophy final involving India and Pakistan a month before.

Tennis, of course, has been fairer than most sporting disciplines thanks to the admirable work done by Billie Jean King, who led the establishment of the Women's Tennis Association in 1973. But even in a sport which has broken ground farther than other sports, the pay gap remains significant. According to the survey, among the top 100 professional players, men earn 24% more than women.

The numbers only get worse in a system which limits women's opportunities in professional sport. The Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) was the last major cricketing nation to award contracts to its female cricketers in 2015. They have not been renewed after lapsing last year thanks to the ongoing crisis at the board; significantly, that did not affect the contracts for male cricketers. More importantly, the national women's team has not played a single international match since the World Cup final in July. The players have been paid on a series-to-series basis in the absence of full-time contracts, but one wonders if the administration is serious about women's cricket when it does not organise a single fixture for months at end.

The question of equal pay is one of fair treatment. Cricket Australia was widely lauded earlier this year because it actively sought to support professional cricket for everyone. The BCCI, though, is only part of the problem. Gender discrimination is not a concern for most sports bodies.

As the survey notes, the prize money for the previous FIFA women's World Cup was merely US$15 million. For the men's showpiece event, it will be US$400 million next year in Russia. Now, since FIFA runs football for both men and women, would it be a radical idea to have equal prize money? It would be in the antiquated corridors of football's governing body. If it ever comes around to the idea, it will not be the first sporting body to do so - tennis got there first. But the lack of will to act on this permeates male-dominated spheres.

As the founder of Women's International Cricket League Shaun Martyn notes in the Sporting Intelligence report, the question of ownership of a sport is relevant to this debate. The people in power are usually men who often prioritise status quo. The question is not whether women's sport is worthy of being promoted; rather, what are sporting bodies doing to promote women's sport? Since they nowadays claim to harbour a sport's best interests - and not that of men - it is incumbent upon them to demonstrate a break from history.

But any such challenge to authority is not welcomed. If a private body was to provide opportunities for women to play a certain sport competitively, the question of ownership would often come up and its status would not be recognised. Turf wars often come in the way of such progressive initiatives, observed Martyn.

Without the best facilities and support, women in sport will not find a home. For many female athletes, the lack of financial rewards forces them to manage multiple jobs in order to continue their involvement with the sport. Their semi-professional status makes it tougher for their interests to be taken seriously.

Another important task was undertaken by the Sporting Intelligence survey. The number of professional footballers in this world is not exactly known. As the report notes, different bodies like FIFA, FIFPro (the global body for professional footballers) and the Football Observatory (a research group at the International Centre for Sports Studies in Switzerland) have undertaken counts at different points in this century. But Sporting Intelligence sought to get a more accurate picture; though it could not come up with anything better than an informed estimate.

A recent report by UEFA on women's football in Europe did help matters but the definition of a 'professional' varies from country to country. So while Turkey reported that it has 316 professional women footballers in a ten-team top division with a few amateur sides, two-time World Champion Germany counted none. Such discrepancies, though, did not hide the fact that even traditionally strong football nations have low-paid or unpaid female footballers.

Having taken all the available information into account, the report estimates that there are 137,021 male professional footballers and they have only 1,287 female counterparts. The biggest caveat to attach to these numbers is that of the semi-professional tag; the men's count would drastically go up if that was to be included while there would a drop among the women as many of the counted are semi-professional in reality. Even if one were to take the numbers at face value, it would mean that only 0.93% of the world's professional footballers are women.

For any sphere of human enterprise to have less than 1% women is staggering. Female footballers who ply their trade in the elite leagues of France, Germany, England, the US, Sweden, Australia and Mexico earn a combined salary that is almost equal to that of Neymar, who became the most expensive footballer this summer when French club Paris Saint-Germain signed him.

Yet, in an age when income inequality is becoming a political rallying point, the gender pay gap does not seem to be considered a problem. Male sport's influence is legion; women's participation in professional sport is considered to be a good thing but very few seem to make the situation less inequitable.

I have argued it before that it is not women who need to adjust to sport; rather it is sport that needs to be redefined. Cricket Australia took a welcome step to alter the perception. Norway's Football Association is also worth a mention as it chose to bring pay parity for the national men's and women's teams - the male players contributed more than US$ 67,000 to their female counterparts for commercial activities.

The only way to help women's sport grow is to invest in it with the enthusiasm reserved for the men. The pathways to professionalism need to exist in every sport for women, for them to be able to assert themselves like only a few athletes do right now.

But institutional support can arrive only if we set a more progressive agenda for sport. What is sport for? Why does it exist? It is important not to separate it from the world we see. The discussions around entrenched patriarchy are arguably more relevant for sport, if one goes by the numbers in the report discussed here.

The battle for equal pay, of course, is a long one. But improvements will not be made if the insular attitudes which engulf sport do not change. In March last year, five members of the US Women's national football team sought redressal from the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission - a federal agency - when they were convinced that the federation, US Soccer, would not be forthcoming with a satisfying proposal for equal pay. If sporting bodies refuse to listen, seeking external intervention might be the only way to go.

This should be kept in mind as we consider sport to be, arguably, gender inequality's final fortress. It is time to storm the Bastille.

Priyansh is a sports journalist and writer.

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Gender Equality in Sport Is the New Final Frontier for Women

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There is a sports body which publicly states its aim to 'achieve gender equity'. It also wants to make the sport of cricket more accessible for women and to provide them greater opportunities to become professionals. Many other teams/federations/organisations will claim to do so but the body in question went ahead with a historic financial commitment.

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uring the first day of apparatus finals in the gymnastics competition, Alex Naddour won the bronze medal on the pommel horse. It was the first medal for the US men's gymnasts at the 2016 Olympics. They'll have a couple more opportunities on Tuesday to pick up additional medals in Rio but regardless of the final total, their performance has already been deemed a disappointment in some corners of the media.

Last week in USA Today, Nancy Armour described the US men as "mediocre" after their respectable fifth-place finish in the team competition, and suggested that they look to their female counterparts for ideas on to how to improve. Her suggestions included holding the men accountable "to the exacting standards" that national team coordinator Martha Karolyi demands of the women, and "regular, high-stake mock competitions so gymnasts can handle the pressure when it counts."

This is not the first time Armour had scolded the men for not being up to the standard of the women. She did it last year before the 2015 world championships when she said it was a mistake for the men's team to be chosen so early, and suggested that they take a page out of the women's book and wait until the last possible minute.

The mistake that Armour and many others have made is assuming that men's and women's gymnastics are directly comparable, when they're barely the same sport. The men compete in six events, the women in four. There is only direct overlap on two apparatuses - the vault and the floor exercise - though in the latter, the women have dance requirements in addition to the tumbling. The uneven bars is similar to the high bar though not exactly the same, and the women don't perform on any apparatuses like the pommel horse or rings.

The extra events and the additional physical requirements mean that it's much harder to draft a men's team of just five to cover six events in a team final. The women get the same number of team members to cover four events. Bringing a gymnast like Madison Kocian, who the US women only used on the uneven bars, would be next to impossible for a men's team to do while effectively covering all six events in a team final. (The British men, however, did do so with star Louis Smith, who can only contribute on pommel horse, so it can work.) The women's selection committee has a much less complicated job than the men's when it comes to putting together a team of five that can contribute high scores across all the events.

Armour also tried to brush off the fact that the US men and women compete in very different international fields, but that's a big part of why the results between the two programs differ. At the moment, the competition on the women's side is fairly weak. The Americans are phenomenal but they don't have have a real rival the way that the Soviets had in the Romanian and East German teams during the Cold War era. These countries, especially Romania, challenged the gymnastics superpower on a regular basis and occasionally bested them. And even when Romania didn't beat the Soviets, they were breathing down their necks, so close that the USSR knew they couldn't make a mistake and claim the top spot.

This year, Romania couldn't even qualify for the Olympics. Russia, the silver medalists, have struggled with injury. And though the Chinese won the team title in 2008, they have failed to return to the form that won them gold. In Rio, the US women won by eight points, which means they could have recorded multiple falls and still ended on top of the podium. That tells you a lot about how good they are ... but also about the relative weakness of their competition.

By contrast, men's gymnastics is great if you're the kind of sports fans who likes to watch tightly-fought encounters. At present, the men's field has never been stronger. The final in Rio saw legitimate challengers to the supremacy of Japan and China. Japan emerged on top but China, the leader after team qualifications, were edged by Russia for the silver. It was the first team medal for the Russian men in 16 years. Right behind China were Great Britain, the 2015 world championship silver medalists. And in fifth were the US, who won the team bronze in 2014 at the world championships. To be in the mix with some of the strongest teams on the planet in one of the most competitive men's team finals in history doesn't exactly make you "mediocre" as Armour ungenerously put it.

But this isn't about being generous or kind to the US men. It's about assessing their performance accurately in the context of their sport, which is not the same as women's gymnastics. Amanda Turner, writing a response to Armour in International Gymnast, pointed out the ludicrousness of this comparison. "Comparing these two teams' results would be like saying, 'The US women's soccer team wins every Olympics and World Cup, so it's time for the men to stop accepting mediocrity and winning the World Cup too! They must not train as hard as the women or they are clearly not as mentally tough when they allow goals."

Anyone who regularly follows soccer would know that such a comparison is ridiculous. Yet this is exactly what people do when they make these sort of blanket statements about the competitive outcomes of the US men's and women's gymnastics teams. But since so few people understand gymnastics and even fewer understand men's gymnastics, it's easy to make the kind of claims that Armour and others have made without receiving any pushback.

This doesn't mean that there isn't room for improvement but if we are serious about improving the outcomes of the men's program, we have to talk about more than discipline and believing that Karolyi is magic. It's not just about "bucking up" and "working harder". We have to acknowledge that there are major differences between the men's and women's side of the sport. We must admit that women's gymnastics enjoys certain material and structural advantages in the US. Women's gymnastics is much more popular and as a result, there is much higher level of participation. This means a deeper talent pool out of which to find those unique specimens who become champions.

The men have seen key resources, such as Division I NCAA programs, disappear over the years. There are now just 16 men's NCAA programs left and they have at most 6.2 partial scholarships as opposed to the up to 12 full scholarships available to women's teams. In the past, the college system had been one of the main training grounds for world and Olympic team members. (See: the 1984 gold medal winning men's team, primarily fielded from UCLA, which no longer has a men's program.) How can we encourage participation among high level male gymnasts if there is little incentive to continue beyond an Olympic dream that can only come true for a lucky few?

If there is anyone the US men should be looking to for guidance, it's their British counterparts. Team GB have gone from doing so poorly that they lost most of their funding to picking up multiple medals over the last quad, including two golds for Max Whitlock in Rio. Instead of focusing on training camps and centralization, which cost a lot, they poured their limited resources into local clubs to provide guidance to the coaches and gymnasts in their home gyms. This increases the number of clubs capable of training up elite gymnasts. As they've received more funding and success, they've invested more money into this approach. Perhaps the person the US men should be consulting is Eddie Van Hoof, not Karolyi.

But even if the American men improve their results, they will be unable to achieve the dominance of the US women unless Japan, China, Great Britain, Russia, Germany, and others stop producing medal contenders. I sincerely hope this doesn't happen. Part of what has made the men's gymnastics in Rio so much fun to watch is how many teams and gymnasts had a credible shot at the medal stand. The men's team and all-around final was edge of the seat excitement. Nothing was a foregone conclusion.

Dominance is only fun for the team that's on top but a truly open field where almost anyone can win, well, that's fun for everyone.

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Comparing men's and women's gymnastics is futile: they're barely the same sport

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USA's male gymnasts have been compared unfavorably to their female counterparts. But the men face different challenges at the Rio Olympics

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Men have no music for floor routines in the olympics

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Men have no music for floor routines in the olympics

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Patrick Smith/Getty Images / Pascal Le Segretain/Getty Images

Though both men's and women's gymnastics include floor exercise events at the Olympic Games, viewers may have noticed some stark, gendered differences between the two competitions.

The women dance and groove along to music as they leap and flip through the air, while the men's portion is silent. The reason goes back to the history of the sport.

Men's gymnastics first appeared at the Olympics in 1896. Female gymnasts were first allowed to compete 32 years later at the 1928 Olympics in a singular event, but they weren't included in a regular program until 1952.

And while the men focused on strength, the women were meant to be graceful.

NBC

This meant women's routines featured dance-like movements and flourishes in addition to tumbling and acrobatics. Women are required to perform with music, and historically they were accompanied by a piano, Tabitha Yim, the head coach of the University of Arizona's gymnastics program, told INSIDER.

"You can even receive an artistry deduction for failing to connect your body movements and dance harmoniously to the character of the music," Yim said.

The music also has its own restrictions.

"The routine must be 90 seconds or less and there can be no words - human voices are permitted as long as the sounds 'hold no meaning,'" she said.

As for the men, they aren't allowed to use music at all, Yim added.

So while the men get to show off their power and strength during their routines, the women must do the same while also showcasing grace and poise. That's why you'll see moves like hand flourishes emphasized in women's gymnastics that you'd never expect to see in men's gymnastics.

But the tide could be changing. The women's routines are getting harder, and tumbling is now emphasized more for women. These athletes are proving to the world that they're more than graceful - they're strong, athletic competitors.

Simone Biles, who won four gold medals and a bronze in this year's Olympics, even has a signature floor move named after her.

Dean Mouhtaropoulos/Getty Images

The original requirements for women are from an outdated perception of women's abilities, but those ideas are mercifully evolving. The skills and strength that women gymnasts portray in all of their events are proof of that.

Read the original article on INSIDER. Follow INSIDER on Facebook. Copyright 2016. Follow INSIDER on Twitter.

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Here's why male gymnasts aren't allowed to compete to music

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Though both men's and women's gymnastics include floor exercise events at the Olympic Games, viewers may have noticed some stark, gendered differences between the two competitions. The women dance and groove along to music as they leap and flip through the air, while the men's portion is silent.

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Most sports-like basketball, soccer, tennis, and golf-are the same, regardless of whether the athletes are male or female. But competitive gymnastics has so many differences between the women's and the men's events that you might as well be watching two different sports.

The major difference between men's gymnastics and women's gymnastics is the apparatus on which the gymnasts compete. They share only two events in common: vault and floor.

Men compete in six events, and they do the events in a different order: floor, pommel horse, rings, vault, parallel bars, and high bar.

Both men and women gymnasts compete on the same floor exercise mat, but the women compete to music, while the men do not.

There are other rule variations as well. In general, dance moves, such as leaps and jumps, are part of the requirements and scoring on women's floor but not on men's, and men are required to do more tumbling skills overall. Men typically perform tumbling passes that demand more strength.

Women's routines tend to be more artistic and dance-like, sometimes telling a story, whereas a priority for men's routines is to display strength. (The women's score also includes a spot for artistry on the balance beam.)

Women used to be able to perform a lunge at the end of a tumbling pass, but as of the 2012 Code of Points, women are now required to stick tumbling passes. Men have always been required to do this.

Women and men both perform on the same vaulting table, though the men usually have the table at a higher height than the women do.

The vaults performed are similar as well. Men typically perform more difficult vaults than women. The top male vaulters often perform double-flipping vaults, such as the handspring double front and Tsukahara double-back. Fewer women perform these.

Men and women used to compete on a vaulting horse-and men vaulted over it lengthwise while women vaulted over the center of it-but the horse was replaced by the table in 2001, mostly for safety reasons. The table is considered a safer alternative to the horse, with less chance that the gymnast will miss the table (especially during Yurchenko vaults) and suffer a severe injury.

The uneven bars (a women's event) and parallel bars and high bar (men's events) are all different from each other.

The uneven bars and parallel bars are usually made out of fiberglass and are bigger in diameter, while the high bar is made out of metal and is smaller in diameter. As a result, gymnasts' hand grips are different for the different type of bars, and it's dangerous to use the wrong type of grip.

The bars are also set up differently. The high bar is a single bar about 9 feet from the floor. The uneven bars are two sets of bars that run about 6 feet apart from each other and stand at about 5 1/2 feet and 8 feet high.

The parallel bars are two bars that are only about a foot and a half apart and about 6 1/2 feet off the floor. All heights are adjustable, though some are standardized in Olympic competition.

Both men's and women's gymnastics-technically called men's artistic gymnastics and women's artistic gymnastics-have the same basic competition formats in the Olympics. At one time, each team had seven gymnasts. From the 2000 to 2016 Olympics, five gymnasts were on a team-four of them competing on each event in preliminaries and three competing on each event in finals. The team size is now four gymnasts.

Gymnasts qualify into the individual all-around and event finals based on their qualifying scores, and 24 gymnasts make the all-around, eight into each individual event. But only two per country can qualify for each specific final. These rules are standard across the men's and women's competitions.

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What's the Difference Between Women's and Men's Gymnastics?

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Most sports-like basketball, soccer, tennis, and golf-are the same, regardless of whether the athletes are male or female. But competitive gymnastics has so many differences between the women's and the men's events that you might as well be watching two different sports.

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Ivy Morris

Ivy Morris specializes in health, fitness, beauty, fashion and music. Her work has appeared in "Sacramento News and Review," "Prosper Magazine" and "Sacramento Parent Magazine," among other publications. Morris also writes for medical offices and legal practices. She holds a Bachelor of Arts in government-journalism from Sacramento State University.

Unlike basketball, tennis or figure skating, in which the men's and women's sports are mostly similar, the differences between men's and women's gymnastics are vast. In gymnastics, it's not just a matter of differences in court size or scoring. Men and women perform entirely different skills on different pieces of equipment.

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Men have six events, while women have four. Both use the vault and floor exercise. Men also practice on the horizontal bar, parallel bars, pommel horse and still rings. The balance beam and uneven bars round out the women's events. USA Gymnastics -- the national governing body of the sport -- notes that many consider the pommel horse the hardest men's event because it takes "an enormous" amount of practice to master basic skills. Because the balance beam is only 4 inches wide and the cause of many falls, the balance beam is often considered the hardest event in women's gymnastics.

USA Gymnastics divides men's and women's gymnastics into two different Junior Olympic Programs, beginning from the time a gymnast enters the sport. Boys begin their first three levels in the Basic Skills Achievement Program, then advance to the Age Group Competition. The very best join the National Olympic Team Program. In the women's program, the first four levels are the beginning or Developmental Levels. Then gymnasts compete in the Compulsory Levels 5 and 6 before advancing to the Option Levels up to Level 10. After Level 10, men and women try out for elite status -- the highest possible rank.

While both disciplines require strength, men's routines focus more on displaying this strength through holds on the still rings and traveling skills on the pommel horse, for example. Women's routines focus more on artistry and grace. The female gymnast tells a story with her body as she performs a routine to music on the floor. Men do not use music for the floor exercise. Women incorporate dance skills in their floor and balance beam routines and must connect their skills on the floor, beam and uneven bars. Only on the floor and horizontal bar do men focus on connecting their skills in succession.

Before 2006, all gymnastics was scored on the 10.0 system. Since 2006, only the Women's Junior Olympic and collegiate programs use this system. At the elite level, men and women follow a complex scoring system under the International Gymnastics Federation that breaks scores down by their difficulty and technical content and their execution. On the balance beam and floor exercise, the women's execution score includes a score for artistry. The Men's Junior Olympic and collegiate programs use a modified version of the International Gymnastics Federation system.

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What Is Difference Between Men's Gymnastics and Women's Gymnastics?

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Unlike basketball, tennis or figure skating, in which the men's and women's sports are mostly similar, the differences between men's and women's gymnastics are vast. In gymnastics, it's not just a matter of differences in court size or scoring. Men and women perform entirely different skills on different pieces of...