How women measure up as divers compared to men

[theduckguru]

I did a study on the effects of consuming green beans and DCS. None of the study group that reported eating green beans 6 months prior to diving ever got DCS. My scientific conclusion was that green bean consmption prevents DCS. If you wish to accept that study as science and reccomend eating green beans to prevent DCS, go for it.

oh, duck, of course a single study qualifies as science! There isn't any rule saying that research has to be replicated in order to be within the realm of science. Naturally, others may challenge the conclusions and attempt to refute them, including through replication of the research, and if a study is replicated with the same results, then the results are more convincing, but to say that a study that was conducted using scientific methodology is not science is simply fallacious. (I think you might be confusing the terms "science" and "fact." They are not synonymous.)

 

[vladimir]

.....

 

[tstormdiver]

My question is,.... Why do we have to "measure up" to the men? At my LDS, I am the only current female tech diver. When I make a dive with the guys, I am expected to set up & handle my own equipment (although I'm rarely refuse help when offered, I certainly don't expect it) & I am expected to carry out my function as part of the team, whether it is the lead, middle or rear. I look atthe guys I dive with as peers, not someone to measure myself up to.

 

[Bhtmec2]

everyone looks the same in a wetsuit with a hood underwater to me

Not ALL

 

[danvolker]

My question is,.... Why do we have to "measure up" to the men? At my LDS, I am the only current female tech diver. When I make a dive with the guys, I am expected to set up & handle my own equipment (although I'm rarely refuse help when offered, I certainly don't expect it) & I am expected to carry out my function as part of the team, whether it is the lead, middle or rear. I look atthe guys I dive with as peers, not someone to measure myself up to.

I saw this as a joke thread, really. The reality is you pick your buddies as "individuals", as statistically our population has way to many "people" ( both sexes) that you would not want for a dive buddy. When you begin looking for the kind of individual you want as a dive buddy, the idea of whether this should be male of female becomes ridiculous, if not foolish.

 

[drrich2]

How you judge impacts the verdict a lot. If safety, minimal reef impact & low air consumption rates are your parameters, then women, being on average smaller and having a reputation for being more conservative in terms of risk, are going to win out (at least on 1 & 3, and I suspect on 2).

If you consider advancing the sport, I imagine the risk-taking hands-on pioneer mentality (a.k.a. 'macho' or just plain willing to tolerate risk in the pursuit of a chosen goal) of men may have helped advance our hobby. After all, as others have noted, the fairly strong presence of women by numbers in scuba has come about over time. I take it the sport got its start mainly with adventurous men.

We could also talk about comparing skinny little people to big chubby ones and find differences, so it's unclear to me how much overall tends between groups apply to the individual diver.

As previously mentioned by someone, men tend to be more cold tolerant. I can dive in 75 degree water comfortably with no wet suit, but my wife would need her shorty. Is that an 'advantage' I have? I'd probably need a 100 or 120 cf tank to match her air consumption on an 80 cf tank; is that an 'advantage' she has? If she's got her shorty & I've got the big tank, do these advantages still count?

I'm not minimizing the very real accomplishments of female divers, but I think men have done a lot for our sport, too. Richard.

 

[Quero]

Richard, some interesting food for thought there. The study described in the link from the opening post was in fact about the impact of male vs female divers on the health of the reef.

As for adventurousness, historically women are very well represented among divers, particularly the women known as the pearl divers of Korea (Haenyo) and Japan (Ama), although they are breath hold divers and not scuba divers. It has long been my assumption that the traditional notion that 'diving = women' in these countries accounts for the large percentages of women among scuba divers of those nationalities as compared to Western cultures where the traditional notion is that 'diving = men' (e.g., the sponge divers of Greece and the coral divers of the Mediterranean), though I admit that this is impressionistic--I don't have statistical evidence to support the view.

 

[MMM]

Richard, some interesting food for thought there. The study described in the link from the opening post was in fact about the impact of male vs female divers on the health of the reef.

As you say, the study says women are more spatially aware than men. Not that they are, in any way, superior divers to men. Like everything else in the contrast of the male-female profile on any activity, each sex has differences that make them better or worse as certain aspects than the other gender. For instance, anything where strength is an attribute, I would want a male with me on the dive. I truly believe we are not equal. We differ in our various strengths making women better at some things than men and making men better at others.

 

[j2s]

Even though most of my diving is solo and this is solely based on personal experience I find women better 'buddy' divers than men and they seem to have better SAC rates too [which just isn't fair ;P !!]...Maybe it's the 'maternal instinct' that makes them better 'buddies' or that men are cursed w/ADD....!!!!!

 

[BluewaterSail]

I'm in the middle of reading Sheck Exley's autobiography "Caverns Measureless to Man". He talks about dives which were record setting in their day (the 70's and 80's), and there are women that participated in them. In fact for some really difficult dives, where he would only consider buddies that he could count on for anything, female names popped up on the short lists of those that he would consider.

It would be hard to deny that Sheck and his associates truly "advanced our sport".

btw, I recommend the book. Facinating look into real exploration, and how the equipment and procedures that we take for granted today developed.

How you judge impacts the verdict a lot. If safety, minimal reef impact & low air consumption rates are your parameters, then women, being on average smaller and having a reputation for being more conservative in terms of risk, are going to win out (at least on 1 & 3, and I suspect on 2).

If you consider advancing the sport, I imagine the risk-taking hands-on pioneer mentality (a.k.a. 'macho' or just plain willing to tolerate risk in the pursuit of a chosen goal) of men may have helped advance our hobby. After all, as others have noted, the fairly strong presence of women by numbers in scuba has come about over time. I take it the sport got its start mainly with adventurous men.

We could also talk about comparing skinny little people to big chubby ones and find differences, so it's unclear to me how much overall tends between groups apply to the individual diver.

As previously mentioned by someone, men tend to be more cold tolerant. I can dive in 75 degree water comfortably with no wet suit, but my wife would need her shorty. Is that an 'advantage' I have? I'd probably need a 100 or 120 cf tank to match her air consumption on an 80 cf tank; is that an 'advantage' she has? If she's got her shorty & I've got the big tank, do these advantages still count?

I'm not minimizing the very real accomplishments of female divers, but I think men have done a lot for our sport, too. Richard.