Listen: The Essential Podcast, Episode 106: Better Faster Farther: Maggie Mertens and the Evolution of Women's Sports

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Nathan Hunt: This is the Essential Podcast from S&P Global. My name is Nathan Hunt. Recently, S&P Global published a pair of articles focused on the rise of women's sports in the U.S. and Europe, and the news is undeniably good. This year, the Olympics will feature full-gender parity for the first time ever. Women's professional sports leagues are attracting audiences and sponsorship dollars comparable to men's leagues. Media outlets are paying top dollar for the right to broadcast women's collegiate and professional sports.

It's possible to look at these results and believe that gender in sports is an issue of the past, a problem to be sure, but a problem that we overcame and moved beyond. This year, when we watch our countries compete in the Olympic Games, we will celebrate the accomplishments of men and women in equal numbers.

But there is a problem with this simple tidy and somewhat self-congratulatory narrative. The problem of gender and sports did not end with the whalebone corset. The problem of gender in sports did not end when the Olympics allowed women to run the marathon, the problem of gender in sports continues to this day.

My guest today is journalist Maggie Mertens, who is the author of a new book, "Better, Faster, Farther: How Running Changed Everything We Know About Women." This is a book that breaks down tidy narratives that talks about the history of women in running and how the gender disparities of the past continue to be felt in the present.

Let me just say, I love this book. I tore through it in a weekend, pausing only to find my wife and tell her about the latest thing I had just read. And if that sounds like I mansplained gender disparities in sports to a woman who is a former college athlete, well, that might have happened. So Maggie, let me welcome you to the podcast.

Maggie Mertens: Thanks so much for having me.

Nathan Hunt: Maggie, let's start with just a basic question. Why running? Why was this the focus of this book? There's so many different stories you could have told, but you've shaped it through the lens of running. So why was running your focus?

Maggie Mertens: Running ended up making the most sense as the lens for this book after many years of research, sporting in general, and stories about women's physical capabilities being questioned in general. So I had -- as you know, because you've read it, a lot of historical examples of this happening of women being told they were physically incapable of doing things, and I wanted to see kind of how that narrative shaped the world.

Running became the perfect vehicle for that because so many of the stories that really popped out as world shaping and sports shaping had to do with running. There was the 1928 games, Olympic Games, where the women were first allowed to run track and field. And this huge incorrect narrative came out from that 800-meter race that occurred then. And that sort of ended up influencing later Olympic Games. Women weren't allowed to run farther than 100 meters for decades after that.

And then there's the question of the marathon really stuck out to me as well. I think people are pretty shocked to find out that there was not an Olympic marathon for women until 1984. That's a pretty recent history, right, and it made me start to think about just the ways that our ideas as a society and about what women are physically capable of have changed so quickly.

And so looking at running was a really great opportunity for that, also because running is such a universal movement, right? I think anybody has run in their life. If you've taken a gym glass, you've probably been forced to run. And I think that's just kind of a beautiful thing. And even looking at the history of human evolution, like humans are really good at running. We're good long-distance runners. And so to kind of count out half of the population from that natural movement felt pretty significant to me.

Nathan Hunt: So Maggie, a huge amount of the beliefs that historically, to an extent, continue to exist around women in running concern this idea that women are physically incapable of this in some way, that women, if they run, I think you make the reference, somehow their uteruses are going to fall out, right? What were the reasons why historically men believed women were incapable of running?

Maggie Mertens: Yes, that's a complicated question, for sure. I think the broad narrative was a fear of really losing the gender binary, right, of losing the gender roles that were very instilled in our society and many other Western societies and societies around the world, which really had to do with the nuclear family, making sure that there was a parent who was in charge of raising children and being at home.

And our economy was kind of created on the back of that idea, right? And if you give women the idea that, oh, they can actually do more than that, that kind of starts to disrupt that particular lifestyle, right? That's societal order. So I think a lot of it kind of rooted from this idea of a lot of fear around a changing world. At the turn of the 20th century, we had women who wanted to vote.

I mean when you just think about what a huge shift that must have felt like, to think that there was a certain class of person, a certain type of human being who was allowed to have power, who was allowed to go out and have this freedom of movement and deciding what -- where their family might live or what their life might look like and what society should look like, and women were included in that.

And when they started to ask for that inclusion, that was really scary. So there was a lot of discussion around that time around kind of what makes a man and what makes a woman and ensuring that we really have these very different ideas about the 2 sexes. And sports was really created to celebrate masculinity. And so when women wanted to do that, it sort of turned everything on its head and a lot of people, I think, were just really scared of that.

Nathan Hunt: Maggie, while I was reading the book, I kept thinking of something that happened a couple of years ago -- more than a couple of years ago, when my wife was pregnant with our first child. And we were at the time doing CrossFit, and for whatever reason, I think our gym was being renovated or something, we were in a public gym, like a 24-hour sports-type gym. And this particular workout involved interval sprints on the treadmill.

And my wife was doing it, and she was visibly pregnant. She is probably, I don't know, about 6 months' pregnant. And she is doing these sprints, and my wife is an incredible athlete. So she's running faster than I am, 6 months' pregnant, she's just going, right? And a man came out of nowhere and he was red in the face and he started yelling that she had to get off this treadmill. She was going to damage the baby.

And my wife was like, no, I talked to my OB-GYN, this is just fine. She's -- I am doing this on doctor's advice, but I remember that red face, that fury, and I remember just seeming so out of left field to me. But again, as you've told this story about how sports has come to define masculinity, all of a sudden, his weird reaction to this made sense. But it also was the fact that he was defining my wife basically as a bearer of children and that was her value and this running was somehow self-indulgent.

Maggie Mertens: Yes. I mean that's been another very recent shift, right? I think I cited in the book that even OB-GYNs had been telling pregnant people to not exercise too excessively, even in very recent years. That was the most common advice. I had my first child in 2018, and I was told similar things, right? Don't lift weights that are too heavy. You don't do anything too excessive.

And I think what's really shifted that is these professional women athletes that are just so incredible are finally getting the kinds of sports science and medical science behind them to have these long extensive athletic careers that include potentially becoming parents, having children and returning to sport.

And that's given a lot of actual data to this idea that it's actually very healthy for a mother, for a pregnant person, to continue to exercise and to have a very strong body because, as I'm sure you know as a parent, childbirth is no joke and having small children is no joke in terms of physical needs.

But it is, it's so rooted in this idea that early on, one of the first reasons given for women cannot run, women should be kind of restrained physically for running too far or too fast or even exercising to the point of like sweating was a big problem was the fear around reproductive health.

And really, the fact that there was very little known around reproductive health and the men who kind of created the modern medical institutions were very kind of left that in this mysterious corner of we don't really want to know what happens. We just want to make sure that the babies continue to get born.

And there was a lot of focus on periods being a time when women and girls should not do anything and puberty was like off limits, we should just not be exercising or moving our bodies at all, which is now we know is basically the opposite of what should be happening.

But there was this huge fear that these women who were going to run, going to compete and going to try to become elite athletes were going to become essentially masculinized and potentially lose their ability to bear children. They weren't entirely sure how this was going to happen, right? There were rumors around whether their uteruses would fall out or whether they would stop having periods, whether the babies would just not come when they actually wanted them, et cetera.

But yes, there's such a long history of that. And I think you continue to see it, too. I mean, even in the political world today, right, like reproductive health is something that's become such a sticking point. And so much of it has to do with this idea that women should not be in control of their own ideas, their own bodies and what they should do in terms of how to stay healthy and have kids when they want to.

Nathan Hunt: So Maggie, one of the themes that you talked about several times in the book is this idea of distance, right, that there have been many points along the way where we've said, well, okay, this far, women can run, let's say, 100 meters, right? We're pretty sure at 100 meters, their uteruses won't fall out. 100 meters is fine, right?

And then it was, okay, well, they can run a little farther than that, but they can't run a mile, right? And if they run a mile, faster than anyone else has run a mile before any other woman, that's not a world record. They shouldn't be running a mile, again, uteruses. You just don't know, right?

And then it was the marathon. Well, they can't run the marathon. And even if they do run the marathon, well, they didn't really run the marathon. And enter a book in this wonderful way with this woman who is sort of the champion ultramarathoner who beats the men, right? But why distance? Why did that become the area of focus?

Maggie Mertens: Yes, it's a great question. I mean, I think there was just any way to any way to kind of restrict and define an appropriate level of femininity and appropriate level of what women could -- how much women could exert themselves before it started to become troubling, right?

So you do have early on examples. And this is essentially because women couldn't be stopped, right, like they were doing some of these things. They were doing sports. Even when men said they couldn't, they would do it anyway. They would set up their own leagues, things like that. So eventually, it was kind of like the men in charge of -- especially like the IOC and these big international sporting delegations, they had to cave in some ways, right?

So they had to at least say, okay, well, we'll give you this and you can have this, but you can't have the full masculine slate of events. You can't run the marathon. So it was a way to kind of give women athletes a little bit without the fears that kind of came along with the rest of it, a way to continue to define difference, right?

And so you had women golfers or tennis players or swimmers who were considered, okay, this is okay, maybe because you can wear a skirt when you do it or you can wear a swimsuit. And the short sprints were actually -- it's really interesting, right, because the 800 was considered too far because the women looked too exhausted. They didn't look basically pretty enough as they were crossing the finish line.

But that's so funny to me now when you look at it because the 100 meter isn't one of the most intense, explosive races there is. So yes, I mean, it doesn't make a lot of sense. And of course, now we're coming to realize from a sports science perspective that women's bodies are actually better at these longer endurance races, that we have some advantages on average when you compare men and women just in terms of being able to continue endurance events longer with tiring a little bit less and things like that.

Nathan Hunt: So your story about the 800 meters at the 1928 Olympics. This was -- well, this was one of the moments where I put down the book and I went and found my wife and I just harangued her on this story, and you will tell it better than I will. It's not the race itself because the race went off and it happened. It was what happened on the reporting of the race that really shocks me, and I'm wondering if you can talk about that a little.

Maggie Mertens: Yes. A lot of the research that I did for the book because women athletes, for all of the above reasons, haven't been covered very well or are -- didn't leave behind a lot of information. A lot of the research I kind of depended on was newspaper archives, and that was just a really interesting experience.

When I was looking at the 1928 Olympics and the 800-meter race in particular, because I kept seeing, even in contemporary reporting, because there are still differences, of course, in many sports around distance and around kind of these ideas of what women can and can't do. And I would often see sort of reported alongside these as the reason behind some of this difference was we could trace it back to this 1928 800-meter race win. All of these women collapsed afterwards.

And the media thought and the IOC thought that this meant that women weren't up to it. And as I dug into that a bit and started speaking with some academics and researchers who had looked at this race and there were so many questions around why was this reported in this way? Because as I pulled up article after article, it's so fascinating because each one explains some terrible thing that happened, but in a very different way, right? And not even any of them agree on how many women were even in this final when it began.

Nobody reported on the fact that like 6 out of the 9 women actually broke the current world record for the 800 meter. Instead, we got quotes about women collapsing, women convulsing, women needing medical attention, women being carried off the track, women passing out later in the locker room even.

And so of course, I think as a journalist, that just starts to kind of raise some red flags if things aren't lining up in terms of reporting. And what I also found super interesting about that was then going back a bit and looking at even the coverage of -- because this was the first time women's track and field was even at the Olympics, how that idea was covered in those before the Olympics even began.

And you had a lot of this kind of sense that the press was already fear mongering around what this was going to do to our women before it even started. So that really played into, I think, some of these reports.

Of course, we don't know all of the details, but we do have photos and even some video evidence that this race was actually pretty normal for the time. Everyone seemed upright and walking around as far as I could tell right after the race. So lots of misinformation early on. But yes, the press played a really important role, I think, in upholding those ideas about femininity.

Nathan Hunt: Another sort of important story that you develop in more detail than I've ever read it before is sort of the history of women in the marathon, right? The marathon is full of myth anyway, right? The idea of the marathon race is actually based on a myth and actually a misunderstanding of a myth. But the idea that women weren't capable of running the marathon, even after they ran marathons, right?

So you have these wonderful stories of women hiding in the bushes, as the Boston -- this woman hiding in the bushes, is the Boston Marathon starts and jumping out and running the whole thing and finishing and that somehow not being evidence that a woman could run a marathon and just how long that was fought for. And to me, the story there is really about -- it's about the organization that runs the Boston Marathon. It's about the IOC. It is organizations refusing to confront reality.

Maggie Mertens: Yes.

Nathan Hunt: What is it about organizations like the IOC that makes them unable to just acknowledge that a group of women just ran a marathon, and we could do that at the Olympics? What is it? What is that conflict?

Maggie Mertens: Well, so Bobbi Gibb give was the first woman to unofficially run the Boston Marathon. That happened in 1966. I will point out that the first woman to join the IOC did not happen until 1981. And so we have pretty much an entirely male sporting organization, and I think that has to do with a lot of it.

Even in the '80s, we had like 75% to 80% male athletes in the Olympics. That was just -- it was just a very male institution. And that progress happened so slowly, right? And again, it was one of those things of we'll give the women this much, but we're not going to -- it was often framed as taking away opportunities for men if we're going to add events for women, right? Because the charter also has this very strange thing in terms of like limiting the number of athletes that can participate in the Olympics.

And so it's always kind of a give-and-take game. And yes, I mean, even going into those 1984 Olympics, so in -- they actually ended up voting the marathon in 1981. And they also did not have a 5,000-meter race yet. They did not have a 10,000-meter race yet. This was the first year that they were running the 1,500, I think. And so that -- it was just a very, very slow progress. And I think a lot of that has to do with the fact that these men were running these sporting institutions as institutions for men.

And giving women opportunities was still seen as kind of this little consolation prize, if you will. And okay, well, maybe -- I mean we see it even today, right? Even in the past -- I mean, you mentioned in your intro about broadcast deals and things like that. And I mean, these numbers have changed drastically just in the last 3, 4 years. And so it's really, I think, an example of institutions will not change until they're forced to, right?

And even in the last 5, 10 years, there have been economists saying there is money being left on the table here in terms of women's sports. And these institutions are too, I guess, tied to old ideas and traditional ideas about what's important and what will make money and what people want to see. It just takes a hand being forced. And I think the story of the women's marathon in the Olympics is so important because these women really came together and did it for themselves, right?

They organized like crazy. Kathrine Switzer and Jacqueline Hansen and all of these women who came together and started their own organization, started their own marathons and literally went to every member of these voting committees to sway them. Went to doctors, went to sports scientists and said, fine, we'll do these studies so that we can prove we're not going to die or have any ill effects by running these races even though, yes, the proof is already there.

We've already been running them, but they really pushed and pushed and pushed until they could not be denied. And I think that, that you're seeing a similar thing happen in women's basketball and things like that where these women are doing it for themselves, right? They're making their own social media presences, be super valuable so that people can see, okay, there is value in this game.

Nathan Hunt: So another recurring theme throughout the book is it comes down to a definition of what is femininity, right? And the definition that keeps coming back is a very specific definition of attractive and white, preferably blond, frail, femininity becomes the only acceptable form of femininity for athletes to display. And so if an athlete is all, if an athlete is strong, if an athlete is black, all of those things become evidence of sort of this loss of gender difference.

And I am wondering, as you were -- certainly, well, I was reading the book, but as you were writing the book and you would come across these news articles where an athlete of the quality of Mary Decker was reduced to, don't know what to call it, the male gaze, let's call it. How did you feel about that? How did you feel reading these old articles and just seeing over and over again women being objectified?

Maggie Mertens: Made me angry and sad. I think a lot of the experience of athletes, especially in that era of Mary Decker, I grew up in the '90s and I was 100% in, the male gaze was the most important thing that any girl or woman needed to know about and our bodies were important only if they conformed to particular standards and thinness was just the peak of everything, right? It was apparently what everyone should be thinking about all of the time.

And I think that's very familiar for a lot of women of just these -- the late 20th century. And of course, to have that be sort of reflected back, even when talking about these athletes, is really sad because -- especially when you end up knowing how much pain and injury a lot of these messages were causing athletes of this era and still do.

But we ended up sort of prioritizing these ideas about what an athlete should look like, what a woman athlete should look like over what actually is healthy for a female able, what actually drives performance for a female athlete and especially runners, gymnasts, people like that.

I'd like to point out a lot that look at the shift in how the U.S. gymnastic team, the women's gymnastic team look from the '90s -- '80s and '90s when we have these tiny prepubescent girls almost entirely to today, we have Simone Biles and Jordan Chiles who are so strong and older, right, like they are adult women who are strong and athletic and not just prized because they are tiny and small and look this way that we think that they should look.

And so I do think we're making progress on that front. But for sure, looking back on those messages and also, of course, it sort of relates to -- it brings up the messages I was raised with and some of those things that are really hard for, I think, a lot of women to shake. It was really upsetting.

And then as you kind of move into, even today, how women athletes are questioned, right, about their gender if they don't conform to certain physical attributes that in and of itself is also very upsetting because it starts to make you -- I mean, it does start to make you wonder how much of your own physical body and the way that you present to the world is because of you or because of what you're conforming to, right, and what you are worried about being perceived by.

Nathan Hunt: So Maggie, one of the challenges in, I think it was the second to last chapter, is a definition around what makes a woman. And this has become hugely controversial in sport. There is the idea that you're only a woman if your testosterone is at a certain level. You're only a woman if you were born with that sexual identity. There is laws in the book that you referenced all over the United States that ban transgender athletes from participating in women's events.

There's a balance here, right, and it's hard balance, which is, on the one hand, women have worked hard to have their own sports leagues and to create a sphere for female accomplishment. And that's amazing and awesome, right? And on the other hand, that can easily turn into something that is exclusionary to people who don't fit into tidy definitions. How do you balance those 2 for yourself?

Maggie Mertens: Yes. So I think the first thing for me is that I love women's sports. I think women's sports has changed my life. Just as like a sports fan, I am so happy to have that women's sports to watch. It's made me just a lot more engaged as a sports fan, a lot happier. I feel like I have to kind of -- I don't have to resign some of my ethics as much when I watch women's sports as when I was watching more men's professional sports, and I love that.

I also think it's a very special thing, and I will die on the hill that it is just as impressive and just as a leap for a woman to be performing at the top of her sport as for a man to be performing at the top of his. And I don't think women have to beat men or perform better than men on certain metrics to be considered equals. I think they are. I think they're just as impressive, if not more.

And yes, at the same time, I do think having a sports world that is defined by a binary that doesn't really exist in sex and certainly not in gender is becoming more and more exclusionary. And I don't think that's okay. I think if anything, my feeling is sports should always be inclusive, I think, especially these laws that are aimed at children, at youth sports, at school sports. The point of youth in school sports is inclusion. The point is for everyone to have the opportunity to participate.

And I think the issue now is getting around the fear, right? Like we talked about the fear of women becoming manly, and we've gotten past that, right, for the most part. And I think we also need to get beyond the fear that women's sports is going to go away for some reason if we decide to be more inclusive around gender, around women who are born with sex differences, women who are born intersex, transgender women and men, I think, and non-binary individuals.

I think we're going to need a more expansive sporting world in the future. And I think that's okay, like I think that's going to be fun. And I don't think that means we have to get rid of Title IX or the WNBA or the women's college basketball tournament. I think that will be more exciting, if anything, because we will have more opportunity to see these elite athletes and maybe think more broadly and expansively around what being an athlete means and what our physical bodies are capable of without having to constantly define it based on sex or gender.

Nathan Hunt: I think one of the things I found exciting about that chapter was that there is so much heated rhetoric on that topic and such an absence of fact. And as you dug into the medical research around the range of testosterone levels you would see in women, the actual value of testosterone for athletic performance, which is in no sense a settled issue.

The performance of transgender athletes supposedly being completely unfair and they just dominate and then you actually -- in the example you shared from Connecticut showed that sometimes they win, sometimes they lose. I just -- I was heartened to read some facts rather than opinion. It's just -- it's so rare in this area. It's something that, for some reason, we just argue from emotion.

Maggie Mertens: Yes, yes. And I think it's because people feel very emotional around it, right? And I don't want to invalidate that. I think sports is very emotional and women's sports, in particular, especially for women who have done this work to fight so hard to be taken seriously as very emotional. But yes, I think when you look at the facts, it's very -- it's sometimes very surprising, right, that we have all of these new rules.

I mean this Olympic games, women who have any kind of DSD, any kind of difference in sex development in terms of being born intersects or having particular hormonal levels that are considered too high, they are not allowed to participate in track and field, in many of these other Olympic sports and transgender athletes are not at all.

And that's really interesting when you look at -- actually, transgender athletes were allowed to compete for years. They had to meet certain definitions and beyond hormone replacement therapy for a certain amount of time. But that didn't cause any kind of overwhelming takeover when they were allowed. So it definitely feels very rooted in this, yes, in this feeling as opposed to the facts.

And I think there was even a recent study done that came out either right after the book was published or right before that actually showed that most transgender athletes have a disadvantage because you are learning to use a whole new body often at a later age. Your hormone replacement therapy is not really easy or great on the body, sometimes that can cause a lot of changes.

And if you're an elite athlete, that's something that's going to impact you pretty extensively. And so I find it really -- yes, I hope we get to a point where more people are receptive to the facts and receptive to these studies that are coming out as opposed to kind of institutionally putting in rules that are released on fear and mythology.

Nathan Hunt: So Maggie, I want to end on a positive note. You are a runner. You are a fan of women's sports. When you look forward to the upcoming Olympic Games in Paris, what running events and what athletes are you most excited about watching?

Maggie Mertens: Oh my goodness. Well, Sha'Carri Richardson is like my #1 this Olympic because I'm so excited for her. I was so extremely bummed when she was cut from the team in 2020. And she is just so herself, and I love that. And I love that you didn't let that setback in 2020 impact her, like she'd been through so much and to come back and just be even stronger. I mean, 4 years later, she is just the top of the world and I love that. I'm very excited for her.

I'm also -- I'm a big fan of the marathon. I love to watch the marathon. I know people think it's maybe a boring thing to watch. But actually, the Olympic marathon is pretty great because it goes quick. It's like a basketball game. It's not that long because these people are running very fast. So I'm really excited about that.

And I'm also excited about Nikki Hiltz. Nikki Hiltz is going to be the first non-binary athlete to participate in the Olympic Games. They're running the 10,000. And I love their story in particular because they were running in the elite women's circuit for a long time.

And once they came out as non-binary and started using the pronouns that fit them, they have exploded as a runner and are so much more joyful and so much more successful. And I think that's just such a beautiful story of embracing your true self and being able to compete better, too, which is really wonderful. So yes, I'm very excited for the Olympics. Very excited to have a break from politics for a couple of weeks.

Nathan Hunt: Absolutely. So the book once again is, "Better, Faster, Farther: How Running Changed Everything We Know About Women." Maggie, thank you so much for joining me on the podcast today.

Maggie Mertens: Thank you, Nathan. This was really fun.

Nathan Hunt: The Essential Podcast is produced by Patrick Moroney. At S&P Global, we accelerate progress in the world by providing intelligence that is essential for companies, governments and individuals to make decisions with conviction. From the majestic heights of 55 Water Street in Manhattan, I am Nathan Hunt. Thank you for listening.

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