Men are often better than women at throwing sports because they are more skilled at concentrating on individual tasks, according to a former world number one darts player turned psychologist.
Linda Duffy (formerly Batten) said her research shows the stereotype about how men are better at single jobs rather than multitasking is true to a degree.
After retiring from top level darts in 1987, she has enjoyed a successful career in academia at Middlesex University which included investigating gender differences in target throwing for her PhD thesis.
“I always used to wonder how men were better than women at darts because on the face of it, why would men be any better than women, it’s just throwing a little piece of metal against a target?” said Prof Duffy, an Associate Professor in Sports Psychology.
“And of course, when I did my PhD that was one of the questions I wanted to answer and when you investigate further, there are oddly enough gender differences in throwing which I was very interested to discover.
“Starting from a very young age, whether it is under or over arm throwing, or throwing for velocity, the boys are always better than girls across the age span until you get to older adulthood when your muscles and bone structure has changed.
“So, then you do start to see women get better than men in certain throwing tasks but that’s normally because of injuries or illness.
“In healthy adults, from children all the way through to mid to late adulthood, men and boys are always better than girls at throwing.
“It doesn’t matter what task you give them, there’s just something and some reason and not just with darts, but balls and beanbags, throwing at a target in whatever way, the boys are always better.
“I still haven’t got to the bottom of exactly why this is, there’s possible reasons in brain structure and other psychological concepts related to field-independence and field-dependence that may come into play.
“It may be where people say anecdotally ‘women can pay attention to ten things at once, where men can only focus on one thing’ which is a joke, because it’s not true for everyone, but I do believe there’s some truth when you are looking at sports which require real focus and concentration such as darts, chess, bowls and archery.
“I think men manage to block out a lot of the white noise, if you like, and focus on what they need to do a lot easier than women. That makes them better.
“That’s not to say a woman can’t beat a man, I’ve beaten loads, but when you look at the top of these sports the best men are always going to be better than the best women.”...