Krypton Factor - Female advantage fair?

[Belmit]

Re Gladiators, skip to 7:10.
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=BBnKP6vddE4

[Justsomebloke]

It really depends how much I fancy a woman on how much of an allowance I make for her, Sad but Blatantly Honest

[Pumpkinstew]

Women have a higher body fat% and shorter stride length then men. ON AVERAGE.

Allowing a slight headstart on an obstacle course designed and built by men for men seems entirely reasonable.

If I had to do the 100m with a ceiling set at 5'8" I'd rightly claim that at 6' I was disadvantaged compared to someone only 5'6".

[Desmo]

Originally Posted by Pheebs

Can you accept this then Desmo-bum-face?:
Men and Woman can be mentally equal (General knowledge etc)

HOWEVER...

Men and Woman can't be physically equal?

If you can accept the above, then you will understand why it is only fair to give the advantage in the game to the ladies! Otherwise... it's an unfair game!

Originally Posted by Desmo

There are some mental skills that women are proven to be better in than men

So no, I don't agree

[Desmo]

Originally Posted by Pumpkinstew

If I had to do the 100m with a ceiling set at 5'8" I'd rightly claim that at 6' I was disadvantaged compared to someone only 5'6".

Not. It just means that you'd be **** at the sport of running 100m with a low ceiling. Just in the same way that with me being a short arse, I'd be crap at the high jump. Or maybe I should be allowed a box to jump off of seeing as I'm disadvantaged?

[Will]

I think this may be contentious, but women will never have (in general) the same physical ability as a man, and as such this makes it fair. On average though a fit man and fit woman will be very similar for tasks such as running and endurance, however when it comes to upper body strength and physically demanding (strength point of view) then the men in general will have an advantage.

For example pitching me up against my sister for example although she's healthy and fit I would anihilate her on that assault course. Pitch me up against a professional female triathelete it will be a lot closer and quite possibly may lose but that's the top 1% of female performance vs and average bloke (me).

If you take the bell curve for population fitness and distribution, men will always have a physical advantage over women by default.

That's my view on it and as such I feel it is fair.

[Justsomebloke]

Your back is looking Great Will, Good effort & I pick You to represent us against our strongest female member

We Win me thinks

[Desmo]

I think people are kind of missing what I'm saying. I KNOW women aren't as physically capable. I don't expect them to be so we don't need to keep going over how they're not as strong as the men (not picking at your post Will, plenty have said it).

I'm just questioning whether it should be taken in to consideration on an all-round skills show

I guess more disagree with me than I thought would though in all honesty

[Matblack]

You could if you wanted to do it as fairly as possible time every athlete over the course ten times and the handicap them based on their average time so the aim was to have them perform to the best of their ability. Then you would be handicaping based on their physical fitness and ability, then the whole assault course event would be about who performed on the day not what sex they were. However this is time consuming and expensive, if you did it you would almost certainly find that over hundreds of amalgamated races that women were on average 'a bit' slower then men, the cheapest way to impliment this is to then give women an arbitary time advantage rather than test all competitors 10 times and take the average.

The question is do you want a situation where the aim is to produce a level playing field giving everyone playing a fair chance of winning (as in a golf handicap), do you want to prove a theory which we already know they answer to (on average men are faster over a combined strength and endurance course (KF with no handicap) or do you want to make a watchable TV programe which uses an arbitary figure to have a stab at making things fair, costs little to makke and makes a nod towards the idea of a level playing field (KF as is).

At the end of the day if you take away the 5 second advantage its likely that men will win more often than women, the only thing which is proved is that men are faster over an assult course but it will give people the ability to say that men are better than women at the Kripton Factor. :/

My answer: you don't race both sexes against one another, you race them independantly and then award points on a sliding scale to the winners of both sexes, that way no one is handicaped or advantaged but you do have to make sure that you have an even number of represenatives of each sex

or

Have a heptathlon style arangement where there is a table which awards points based on time over the course cross referenced to height, weight, sex and cardio fitness, but it wouldn't be as much fun to watch.

By the way I haven't seen this program since about 1985

MB

[Matblack]

Originally Posted by Desmo

I think people are kind of missing what I'm saying. I KNOW women aren't as physically capable. I don't expect them to be so we don't need to keep going over how they're not as strong as the men (not picking at your post Will, plenty have said it).

I'm just questioning whether it should be taken in to consideration on an all-round skills show

I guess more disagree with me than I thought would though in all honesty

I see your point but the assault plays to a strength that is inherient and obvious in the male of the species, although women 'may' have a very slight advantage in other tests it is nowhere near as definative as the men's advantage in assault course. Most scientists would argue that it would take a large number of tests to prove the womens descrete advantage in a mental test but far fewer to prove male dominance in strength and endurance.

I suggest we introduce a rythmic gymnastics event in to KF to even things up, this would play to female agility and flexibility and we'd get to see women in leotards and I 'might' watch.

MB