Mixed-sex sports (also known ascoed sports) areindividual andteam sports whose participants are not of a singlesex. In many organised sports settings, rules dictate an equal number of people of each sex in a team (for example teams of one man and one woman). Usually, the main purpose of these rules are to account forphysiological sex differences. Mixed-sex sports in informal settings are typically groups of neighbours, friends or family playing without regard to the sex of the participants. Mixed-sexplay is also common inyouth sports as beforepuberty and adolescence, sport-relevant sex differences affect performance far less.
There are multiple dynamics to mixed-sex sports teams. Where sex differences in human physiology do not play a significant role in a person's proficiency in a sport, then men and women may compete in a singleopen class, as inequestrian sports. When sex is a major factor in a competitor's performance, sports will typically split men and women into separate divisions, but there may be mixed-sex team variants, such asmixed doubles. In artistic judged sports, these physical differences play a key role in performances, as demonstrated inpair figure skating andacrobatic gymnastics.
Mixed-sex sport events may be organised to achieve certain social aims, such as boosting female participation in sport, as a form ofexercise, or to improvesocial harmony between the sexes.[1]
It is uncommon in most organised sports to find individuals of both sexes competing head-to-head due to physiological differences. This is to ensure equal opportunity for both males and females to participate in fair sporting competition because of the divergence in physical capacity for athletic achievement. Young children often participate in mixed-sex sports leagues because the physical differences between males and females are not as pronounced before the age of puberty. Male puberty confers a measurable physical advantage on athletic performance, and male performance in athletic events begins to exceed that of age-matched females during early adolescence.[2] Additionally, many non-contact sports separate men and women in competitive settings. Due to historical gender biases against women and lower levels of female participation[3], as well as the differences in physical capacity, these sports often maintain a female-only category while offering an open category for both men and women.
In most forms ofmotorsport, men and women are allowed to compete in direct competition. Female competitors who have achieved wins at the highest levels of motorsport includeDanica Patrick,Ellen Lohr andMichèle Mouton, with Mouton finishing runner-up in the1982 World Rally Championship. There are some series which are female only in an effort to promote women in motorsport, most notablyW Series andFormula Women. However, these series have caught criticism for segregating female drivers as opposed to supporting them in their own campaigns.
Inequestrian sports, male and female riders compete against each other ineventing,dressage andshow jumping disciplines. Femalejockeys compete alongside male ones inhorse racing, though they constitute a minority of jockeys overall. Beyond the human athletes, male and female horses are found in racing, with a roughly 60/40 split at the top level betweencolts andfillies.[4]
Insnooker, the professional tour is open to men and women, with for instance four female players competing on the main tour in 2023/24 (Reanne Evans,Mink Nutcharut,Rebecca Kenna andBaipat Siripaporn).[5] In addition, the separate women-only tour encourages female participation in the sport.[6]
Inhard court bike polo, players, regardless of sex, compete against each other, in teams of 3, in every day play and in tournaments. There is normally no stipulation on sex, but to encourage diversity some tournaments require all teams to included a mixture of sexes or genders.
Incroquet, three women have won the British Association Croquet Open Championship:Lily Gower in 1905, Dorothy Steel in 1925, 1933, 1935 and 1936, and Hope Rotherham in 1960. In 2018, two international Golf Croquet championships open to both sexes were won by women: Rachel Gee of England beat Pierre Beaudry to win the European Golf Croquet championship, and Hanan Rashad of Egypt beat Yasser Fathy (also from Egypt) to win the World over-50s championship.
The mixed division is a staple ofUltimate (without being the standard)—it is the only division showcased at both the2013 and2017 World Games. Seven-player mixed teams (4 men plus 3 women, or 4 women plus 3 men) directly compete. While most often players mark opponents of the same gender, match-ups between people of different gender are not uncommon to see. Open divisions are common in Ultimate, where sex/gender is not explicitly relevant in team composition—although at highest competitive levels male players predominate these divisions. Accordingly, although women's divisions are also common, men's are not (only appearing in settings without open divisions).
Insport shooting, the physical demands are lower relative to other sports, though fatigue and grip may be different between sexes. Research is conflicting about the influence of sex in the performance of shooters.[7]In 1966 theInternational Shooting Sport Federation published its open events as mixed. From1968 to1980, men and women competed together inOlympic shooting.[8]
In theNCAA, the main governing body of college/university sports in the US, the only sport in which men and women compete against one another directly isrifle shooting. While male and female riders compete against one another in international equestrian sports, NCAA-recognized competition is open only to women, currently as part of theNCAA Emerging Sports for Women program. The NCAA awards a combined men's and women's team championship in two sports—fencing andskiing—but all individual bouts or races involve members of the same sex, and teams field separate men's and women's squads.
Thecoxswain in arowing crew can usually be of either sex while the rowers are separated by sex.
In dog sled racing, male and female mushers are in direct competition. About 1/3rd of mushers in theIditarod are female, and finishers in the top ten are proportionately split by gender.[9]
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A common form of mixed-sex event is for pairs of one male and one female.
Sports based ondancing usually have male/female pairings, such asice dancing,pair figure skating,ballroom dancing andsynchronised swimming duets. In these sports/events, the male and female participants physically work together (often to music) to jointly produce an artistic athletic performance. Similarly,taekwondopoomsae, which is performance-based, also has a mixed pair event.
Mixed doubles are events where two mixed-sex pairs directly compete (that is, all four competitors are in open play as two teams). This is particularly found inracket sports (which rarely have larger teams), includingtennis,table tennis,badminton,squash andracquetball.
Pairs may also compete inturn-based games: one format (out of many) alternates the woman and man of each pair just as the competing sides alternate, so each round has four turns of individual action. Well-suited to strategy-based sports (such asmixed doubles curling, mixedgolf, mixedbowling, mixed teamdarts) where players can beneficially undertake mental planning or assessment while waiting for their turn.[10] Separate male and female performances may also be scored then added to produce mixed team results in such sports asdiving.Synchronised diving is also found in mixed-sex format. Inprofessional wrestling,mixed tag team matches do not explicitly alternate in a turn-based manner but each wrestler only faces their opponent of the same sex (switching occurs at players' discretion).[11][12]Intergender wrestling between a man and a woman also occurs but is scripted like other professional wrestling.
In non-vehicularracing sports the physiological differences between the sexes often preclude head-to-head competition between people of different sexes at the elite level. Mixed-sex events are often held though with arelay race format.
Inrunning, amixed 4 × 400 metres relay race was introduced at the2017 IAAF World Relays, and added to the2019 World Athletics Championships (details) and2020 Summer Olympics (details). In addition, a 2 × 2 × 400 m and shuttle hurdles mixed relay races were introduced at the2019 IAAF World Relays.The Match Europe v USA in 2019 had a mixed 200+200+400+800 msprint medley relay.
Incross country running, a 4 × 2 km mixed relay race was added at the2017 IAAF World Cross Country Championships.
Inswimming, mixed relay races were introduced at the2014 FINA World Swimming Championships (25 m) (4 × 50 m freestyle and medley), the2015 World Aquatics Championships (4 × 100 m freestyle and medley), and the2020 Summer Olympics (4 × 100 m medley). Inopen water swimming, mixed-gendered relays were introduced at the2011 World Aquatics Championships (4 × 1250 m).
Intriathlon, theITU Triathlon Mixed Relay World Championships mixed relay race has been held since 2009. Also, thetriathlon at the Youth Olympic Games has a mixed relay race since 2010, and the event was introduced at the2020 Summer Olympics (details). As in standard triathlons, each triathlon competitor must do a segment of swimming, cycling and running.
Inbiathlon, a mixed relay race was first held at theBiathlon World Championships 2005 in Khanty-Mansiysk (4 × 6 km), and it was added to the2014 Winter Olympics (4 × 6 km / 7.5 km).
Inroad cycling, the2019 UCI Road World Championships introduced ateam time trial mixed relay where first three men and then three women ride together as a national team.[13] Distances vary in road cycling. The 2019 race was 2 × 14 km.
Inmountain biking, theUCI Mountain Bike World Championships has amixed team relay race since 1999.
InCyclo-cross, theUCI Cyclo-cross World Championships has amixed team relay race since 2022. The Cyclo-cross mixed relay event is also a mixed age category event where each relay team consists of three men and three women riders where a set amount of riders are from Junior and Under-23 age categories.
Inadventure racing teams of 4 must include at least 1 member of the opposite sex.Archery also incorporates mixed-team competition (which can also be seen at theOlympic level).
In a number of countries, clubunderwater hockey is mixed-sex with any ratio of sex allowed. However, national teams usually compete in single sex teams.
Mixed-sex forms ofball sports involve set numbers of each sex per team, sometimes defining the roles in the team by sex/gender (examples includekorfball,Baseball5, coedsoftball,quadball,dodgeball,touch/tag rugby,American flag rugby,flag football,wheelchair handball, andwheelchair rugby,wheelchair rugby league, and Netball).
Sports were almost never mixed in any way inancient Greece.[14] Women were forbidden from competing in or even viewing theancient Olympic games.[note 1] They competed at the separateHeraean Games, from which men were excluded.[17] Although taking place in the same stadium as the Olympic games and also every four years, it was an unrelated festival (of Hera) with fewer sport events, none of which exactly matched Olympic counterparts. Olympic winners were honoured in the Sanctuary of Zeus; Heraean winners at theTemple of Hera (where since 1936 the modern movement has lit and kept the OlympicFlame).[18]
Mixed-sex sport has a long history at the modernOlympic Games, dating back to the1900 Summer Olympics (the first in which women participated). Two women competed against men inequestrian events,[19] thecroquet competition was mixed-sex,[20] andHélène de Pourtalès was the sole female sailor, achieving the Olympics' first mixed-sex team champion as part of the gold medal-winning Swiss team.[21] The sole time Olympicmotorboating was held (1908),Sophia Gorham took part in a mixed British team.[22]
Mixed doubles tennis was first contested in 1900 but fell off the programme after 1924 before being reintroduced in 2012.[23]Mixed doubles badminton was introduced in 1996.[24]
Pair figure skating was present at the summer games in 1908 and 1920 before continuing as a founding event at the firstWinter Olympic Games.[25]Ice dancing expanded the mixed figure skating programme in 1976.[26]
Sailing at the Summer Olympics was mostly mixed-sex up to 1988 but grew increasingly divided, with no mixed sailing events being held in2012.[27]
Shooting at the Summer Olympics continued on a mixed basis in several events from 1968 to 1992, before competitors were restricted by sex.[28] In 1992,Zhang Shan became the first woman to win the gold medal in Olympic shooting.
There was an increased focus on mixed-sex competition at the start of the 21st century, with new introductions includingmixed biathlon relay, team figure skating, and luge mixed team relay in 2014, thenNacra 17 in 2016, andmixed doubles curling andmixed team alpine skiing in 2018. Mixed team shooting events and table tennis mixed doubles are set for inauguration at the2020 Summer Olympics.[29][30] Mixed-sex relay events are also slated for the 2020athletics andswimming programmes. These changes resulted from anInternational Olympic Committee initiative to increase women's participation towards parity with men's – the recasting of men's events as mixed-sex ones was a part of this initiative.[31] Ski jumping competitions also includemixed team events.
Baseball5 will be played at the2026 Summer Youth Olympics, and will be the first Olympic team sport involving mixed-sex teams.[32]
In the 2020s, in response to transgender controversies in sports, several international and national sports federations prohibited transgender athletes from competing in the female category and (sometimes) created a separate "open" category to allow fortransgender,non-binary or cisgender male athletes to participate, including theBritish Triathlon Federation,[33]International Swimming Federation (FINA)[34] andBritish Cycling.[35] This has createdde facto mixed-sex sports competitions.
Such open categories have been criticized by transgender athletes and LGBT rights activists astransphobic. In addition, few athletes have signed up for open-category competitions, such as that for the2023 World Aquatics Swimming World Cup.[36]
Several women have been selected by or played on otherwise men-only teams, including: