The Olympic association says it does not have women’s ski jumping because there are not enough competitors in the world to make it worth while. Of course a lot of countries don’t even have winter…

A lot of women are very competitive in tennis. Why is that different? less violent? just plain more fun?

Charles: As a game designer I can tell you that I have never in my life in observed the “common wisdom” that women are less competitive than men. In fact, I have more often met women who avoid games because they are too competitive and think that they get too emotional about winning and losing.

Gneezy, U., Niederle, M., & Rustichini, A. (2003). Performance in competitive environments: Gender differences. Quarterly Journal of Economics, 118, 1049-1074, reviews two studies where women’s scores on some task do not change between competitive and non-competitive conditions, whereas men’s scores increase. One of the studies, (Gneezy, Niederle, and Rustichini (2003). Performance in Competitive Environments: Gender Differences. Quarterly Journal of Economics, 118(3): 1049–74.), found that women did react negatively to being placed in mixed-sex competitions, which may indicate the activation of a stereotype threat. They also cite a study (Chen, Yan, Peter Katuscak, and Emre Ozdenoren. 2009. “Why Can’t a Woman Bid More Like a Man?” Unpublished.) that claims women’s competitiveness varies in response to their menstrual cycle, but I cannot vouch for an unpublished study, though it does match the findings out from evolutionary psychologists relating to mate preference variation based on the menstrual cycle.

Michael, if you start making distinctions about what the intrinsic aim of the game is, then boxing is not about bashing the other guy in the head for an hour while taking similar damage yourself either, the same way that American football is not about a bunch of really heavy guys smashing into each other as hard as they can… Am.football is just as violent in the realistic definition, where you have a game target and you are allowed a controlled amount of violence against the opposition. In fact, if the same level of head and body protection were available in boxing, it is likely that the chance of brain damage (as well as KOs, of course) in boxing would go significantly below AmF.
Don’t get me wrong – I am pretty clear that boxing within the current rule framework and against a reasonably equally skilled opponent quickly degenerates into a grueling bashing contest. Although neurologically speaking we must have by now some data where at least some answers about boxing and brain damage can be asked – for example, whether number of matches, average number of rounds, or knockouts/damage sustained can be a better explanatory variable.

Anyway, back to the gender discrepancy. I think Charles’ point can explain away a great deal of the difference. It also points to the selection bias in your observation that most women that you know don’t care about boxing, football, poker etc – rephrase that to ‘most women you know don’t care to tell you whether they care about boxing, football, poker, etc’, and you have a valid observation, though much less of a point.

It’s a newish sport, and I guess time will tell, but so far it doesn’t seem like the older guys who have had long careers (e.g., Antonio Rodrigo Nogueira, Mark Coleman, Chuck Liddell, Randy Couture), are ending up like Muhammad Ali.

Obviously this comment doesn’t say anything about the gender angle (though I’ll note in passing that women’s MMA is growing) or say anything about whether it’s morally OK to be entertained by any sport that involves people doing some kind of violence to each other (though I am basically a bleeding-heart liberal and enjoy MMA). But insofar as disgust about boxing (or American football) is predicated on the brain damage it tends to inflict, it does seem quite possible at the moment that MMA is a more exciting and less injurious alternative.

Because it’s boring as all hell? Yeah, life is random; skill can overcome some bad luck but has its limits; it’s a metaphor, we get it.
There is a reason every TV show about Las Vegas that focuses on the gambling and casinos gets cancelled after three episodes — normal people don’t give a damn.

Women have plenty of faults, and plenty of other stupid ways to waste time, but I have to score this in their credit column, rather than the debit column.

It may be true that there are some games that simply aren’t attractive to women on some basic level, but it is equally true that we live in a society that does not value women’s participation in games as highly as it values the participation of men. It should be obvious that the fact that boys are pushed towards sports at a very early age has something to do with the popularity of those sports among men.

In my mind the answer to your question is that we have a societal aversion to public displays of competition by women, and that’s going to carry across all games from Poker to Football to Chess. Men are encouraged to be competitive from a very early age while women are either not encourage or actively discouraged. It seems as simple as that.

I will readily concede that boxing isn’t everybody’s cup of tea, but those who dismiss the sweet science as mere brutality are philistines. Not even Don King can ruin this sport.