Sports without contact mechanics I’ve always wondered why the split
Look at world records for any sport that requires raw strength/power, speed, and endurance. The split is pretty extreme. The marathon world record is 2:00:35, set in 2023. The women’s world record is 2:17:42, 13% slower. For the 100m, the top time is 9.58s for men. Over 180 men have broken the 10 second barrier. The top woman is 10.49; no woman has ever broken the 10 second barrier. Given that power lifting is harder to do direct comparisons (…in a way that readily makes sense to people that aren’t competitive power lifters…), I’ll just note that it’s not even close.
Any sport that has a significant speed, endurance, or strength component is going to tend to be dominated by men. When it’s purely a skill issue, the splits are much more even. When you look at archery, for instance, women sometimes beat men; the split is fairly even.
In a lot of ways, it makes sense to have a hard gender split in sports, and not try to make a solid delineation between what sports require enough skill to overcome a physical gap versus which ones don’t.