>We already separate people into performance levels - why not do that irrespective of 'gender'?
I'm not sure that this is possible while affording women a chance to compete.
Men's physical advantages over women lend them a huge advantage in sports. We rarely see men compete against women, so the degree of the difference might not be very clear.
Consider that, in 2017, the US Women's national soccer team (the best female soccer players in the US, who went on to win the world cup in 2019) was defeated by FC Dallas (a team made up of the best 14 year old boys from Dallas, TX). If there are eleven 14 year old boys in Dallas who are better than the best female soccer players in the world, how many grown men are there in the US who are better than the best woman? Thousands? Tens of thousands? With that in mind, how would you arrange a soccer league, arranged by performance level, in which women were able to compete in meaningful numbers?
I'm not sure that this is possible while affording women a chance to compete.
Men's physical advantages over women lend them a huge advantage in sports. We rarely see men compete against women, so the degree of the difference might not be very clear.
Consider that, in 2017, the US Women's national soccer team (the best female soccer players in the US, who went on to win the world cup in 2019) was defeated by FC Dallas (a team made up of the best 14 year old boys from Dallas, TX). If there are eleven 14 year old boys in Dallas who are better than the best female soccer players in the world, how many grown men are there in the US who are better than the best woman? Thousands? Tens of thousands? With that in mind, how would you arrange a soccer league, arranged by performance level, in which women were able to compete in meaningful numbers?