Understanding women’s health and treating female athletes is a complex matter of understanding what conditions or issues are common, severe and/or exclusive to women. For example, osteoporosis is more common although not limited to women, where as menstruation and pregnancy are exclusive to women. A medical practitioner needs to understand the specific anatomical and physiological differences between the genders in order to cater for his/her needs.
Women athletes are subject to conditions specific to gender that the male athlete is not. Some conditions like osteoporosis are more common in women although not limited to women. Pregnancy and menstruation are exclusive to women and thus the female athlete. Care needs to be taken when exercise during pregnancy. However, research suggests that menstruation does not decrease speed, efficiency or stamina in athletes, although the emotional factors involved with menstruation may have an influence on the female athlete.
Although physical differences between the male and female athletes exist, there are many more similarities between males and female athletes. A number of the differences between the genders exsit largely due to the average increased size of the male and can be listed as follows:
1. Skeletal:
Skeletal growth in young boys and girls is roughly the same up until nine or ten years. Here the girls enter their adolescent growth spurt and surge ahead of boys in regards to weight and height. Boys begin their adolescent growth spurt at approximately thirteen years old, two years later than girls. Girls usually reach their maximum height by their seventeenth year whilst boys can reach full maturation as late as twenty one. Women generally have smaller bone mass than men because they are physically smaller.
2. Body Composition:
Women have a higher body fat percentage when compared to men. Women have a fat percentage of approximately 26 % when compared to men’s 14%. Oestrogen, the dominant female hormone causes increased body fat, generally around the hips and thigh region, and decreased muscle mass.
3. Physiological Differences:
Women have smaller hearts than men which means there will be differences in the amount of blood flowing to the muscles during exercise. Women also have smaller upper bodies which in tern affects lung capacity. Women have a lower basal metabolic rate. This means that at rest they convert food to energy slower than men would. Men have more red blood cells when compared to women. This means men have a greater oxygen carrying capacity than women.
4. Training and Performance:
As men have a more muscle fibres and they are longer than those found in women, women are on average, only two thirds as strong as men. These differences in strength are based on size. In other words, per unit of muscle mass, the female is as strong as the male. However, due to the effects of testosterone in the male, they are able to gain more muscle mass, quicker the females, when placed in strength training. In endurance events, women lag behind men by 5 to 15 % largely due to body composition. Smaller mass, decreased cardiac out-puts and decreased haemoglobin also play a role in performance in endurance sports.