Olympic Routesetters All Male?!

Is this true? If so, how could this happen? In a day and age when things are painstakingly made equal I am baffled by the lack of diversity among professional routesetting.

Link to NYT article, there was one female routesetter but she was ousted:

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/08/02/sports/olympics/sport-climbing-tokyo.html?searchResultPosition=1

Dude, don’t drum up the outrage! They aren’t.  .

Ok, the majority is. Because the majority of toutesetters at that level are males. 

Tradibanwrote:

Is this true? If so, how could this happen? In a day and age when things are painstakingly made equal I am baffled by the lack of diversity among professional routesetting.

Hard to take seriously coming from a person who refers to other's as "white trash". Selective equality is not equality.

“Professional routesetting”

Lol

Lena chitawrote:

Dude, don’t drum up the outrage! They aren’t.  .

Ok, the majority is. Because the majority of toutesetters at that level are males. 

They are. Here's an article from the New York Times, a much more reputable source than Instagram, on the subject. There was ONE female one the team but she was ousted:

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/08/02/sports/olympics/sport-climbing-tokyo.html

As an anecdote I once inquired with a well-known route setter why there wasn't more females on the team, his reply was "We interview them but they just can't keep up with us.".

LIBERALS OUTRAGE ME!!!

;)

I’ve just been triggered 

All male routesetters?

At least there’s one thing in the Olympics that’s like real climbing

Per interview with Jackie Heuftle on the Runout Podcast. There was a Polish woman on the setting team for the olympics, but when they were postponed she had to drop out due to pregnancy. She also mentioned that currently there just aren’t enough qualified female route setters at the World Cup level. 

B Pwrote:

“Professional routesetting”

Lol

Why?  There is a lot of money in the industry and certifications are required to set at the higher levels. Also, many gyms require them for head setters. Like it or not, it is a profession. 

Frank Steinwrote:

Per interview with Jackie Heuftle on the Runout Podcast. There was a Polish woman on the setting team for the olympics, but when they were postponed she had to drop out due to pregnancy. She also mentioned that currently there just aren’t enough qualified female route setters at the World Cup level. 

I realize its hard to set fun routes and it is an art in which many setters suck at but having no women setters at the Olympics is kinda messed up, especially since the routes dont have to be fun. Women should set for women in competition IMO.

Yet another reason to not watch.

M Mwrote:

I realize its hard to set fun routes and it is an art in which many setters suck at but having no women setters at the Olympics is kinda messed up, especially since the routes dont have to be fun. Women should set for women in competition IMO.

Yet another reason to not watch.

Well, then the IFSC needs to recruit more women, have them apprentice and have them certify. Although there are a lot of good female setters, you can’t grab any rando setter from a gym and send them to a World Cup  or the Olympics. It does sound like there was an effort to send at least one female setter. Anyway, are there complaints about inappropriate setting for the women at the Olympics? 

M Mwrote:

I realize its hard to set fun routes and it is an art in which many setters suck at but having no women setters at the Olympics is kinda messed up, especially since the routes dont have to be fun. Women should set for women in competition IMO.

Yet another reason to not watch.

Why do routes for women have to be set by women? Anyone even vaguely competent at setting should be able to set a wide range of stuff, to accommodate whoever shows up at the gym.

The exception, in my opinion? 

When you get to the higher grades. That's harder, a lot harder, and needs more experience. Experience takes some time, and effort, getting the training, the certs, the exposure to ideas...

By your reasoning, women might as well kiss off climbing entirely, with so few females setting routes. Outside, developing? Uhhhhhh.....

The simplest answer to why the routesetters are men, is because most setters are male, still. Yeah, there's women, and that gap is closing, but being a paid anything, or even a volunteer, in climbing is still more men than women. 

That doesn't mean it's actively antifemale, the numbers just haven't had time to catch up yet.

And, by the way, setting isn't particularly difficult at all. Anyone can easily learn how to get holds on and off a wall, in very little time.

Getting good at it, or at the least, efficient.... that's a whole other thing.

I found setting to be quite fun...but I'd sure not wanna do it all the time. As a volunteer, do what you want, when you want (within parameters, of course), it was great!

Best, Helen

Frank Steinwrote:

Anyway, are there complaints about inappropriate setting for the women at the Olympics? 

The women did all seem to have a really hard time with the lead route this morning. I’m sure conditions were more of an issue than the route setting, but it seems a little unusual to have so many top competitors fall pretty early on a lead route.

Sam Cieplywrote:

The women did all seem to have a really hard time with the lead route this morning.

I haven't seen it yet, but comments elsewhere make it sound like a low crux thinned the crowd? Maybe it was intended to do just that? I know comp routes usually get progressively harder.

Frank Steinwrote:

Per interview with Jackie Heuftle on the Runout Podcast. There was a Polish woman on the setting team for the olympics, but when they were postponed she had to drop out due to pregnancy. She also mentioned that currently there just aren’t enough qualified female route setters at the World Cup level. 

Yep, the polish woman was replaced by a man because there aren't enough "qualified" women based on qualifications set by whom? Men. And that's what they always say isn't it? "There just weren't any qualified women to hire".

M Mwrote:

I realize its hard to set fun routes and it is an art in which many setters suck at but having no women setters at the Olympics is kinda messed up, especially since the routes dont have to be fun. Women should set for women in competition IMO.

Yet another reason to not watch.

Why would you not watch because of that?

Some people are looking for a reason to be offended 

Tradibanwrote:

Yep, the polish woman was replaced by a man because there aren't enough "qualified" women based on qualifications set by whom? Men. And that's what they always say isn't it? "There just weren't any qualified women to hire".

Exactly. I've spent enough time on plastic and climbing with highly skilled women to know that they would love to see more routes set by women. Imagine all the bruhs complaining about women set routes where more technique is required than biceps and forearms.

Maybe its just that most women are smart enough to not take dangerous low paying dead end jobs?

What is the male/female ratio of routesetters compared to Internet trolls?

Maybe this has something to do wid it:

Summary: Men consistently outperform women on spatial tasks, including mental rotation, which is the ability to identify how a 3-D object would appear if rotated in space. ... Moreover, in men, the greater parietal lobe surface area is directly related to better performance on mental rotation tasks.

It's even worse than being just sexist. There are no route setters from Africa or Latin America. There's only one from These Great United States of America, and only because the "Polish" woman got booted out for letting her uterus take over. Even though we created the One True Climbing Ethic here in the US.  

The IFSC included as one of it's selection requirements "Internationality, gender equality, youth;" still looks like mostly white male europeans. HYPOCRISY! Don't they even know that America is the Greatest climbing nation in the world? Where's the outrage! I say we boycott the Olympics and these athletes competing under the flag of Biden's America. I, for one, will continue to not watch them.