Abstract
The current study aimed to compare shooting performance between male and female athletes during the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) Rifle Championship from the 2007 to 2013 seasons. This sport is distinct from most competitive sports as it requires little physical exertion, so physiological/ biomechanical differences between the genders that generally bring about superior performance by males relative to females may have only minimal effect on shooting performance. NCAA competitions, unlike Olympic shooting events today, allow male and female shooters to compete against each other. Using archival data covering a period of 7 years from both the team and individual tournaments, 555 scores of the best 149 shooters among mostly U.S. collegiate athletes (the best of whom went on to compete in the Olympics) were analyzed using a generalized estimating equation (GEE) model. We found no differences in performance between the genders both during team and individual competitions. The results suggest that Olympic shooting is exercising a “separate and (un)equal” policy which should be reconsidered.
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