Take a look at Stanford’s sports performance, and you’ll notice a striking disparity: The women outperform the men. When we tracked performance over the past decade in six sports for which we could easily find reliable data, women won more than the men in all four sports measured by W-L record – basketball (87 percent vs. 63 percent), tennis (96 percent vs. 84 percent), baseball/softball (71 percent vs. 65 percent), and soccer (79 percent vs. 52 percent) – and were ranked higher on average than the men in the two sports without W-L records – golf (18.3 vs. 28.0) and track and field (12.5 vs 16.3). Ten of Stanford’s last twelve NCAA championships have come from women’s teams. It isn’t that the men are bad – and we’re not just saying that to forestall assaults by the basketball team, it’s just that the women are better, and by a highly statistically significant margin.

Why is this? A first hypothesis involves the football team and Title IX. To comply with Title IX, Stanford spends comparable amounts of scholarship money on its men’s and women’s programs. Because the football team funds go only to the men, the remaining women’s programs should be better funded than their men’s counterparts. More scholarship money means more competitive success. But this hypothesis doesn’t hold up under examination. Virtually every school Stanford competes with has a football team, and should experience the same effect; the “women’s advantage” will cancel out. And if this effect were responsible for Stanford women’s success, you would expect to see the same effect in other schools with large football programs, which you don’t.

So maybe it’s because men’s sports pay better? Stanford’s recruiting advantage comes in large part from its academics. But the salary bonus conferred by a Stanford degree isn’t that economically valuable to a male basketball star, who if he goes pro will make on average $3 million a year; on the other hand, it’s extremely valuable to a female basketball star, who will earn $55,000 a year. This isn’t to say, of course, that Stanford athletes are materialistic moneygrubbers, but on the margins people do respond to economic incentives, and Stanford’s are more alluring to female recruits. This theory is plausible but not borne out by the data. If it were true, you would expect Stanford’s women’s winning advantage to be largest in sports with the largest male/female salary discrepancy. In fact, the reverse is true: Women’s teams do best in sports with less salary discrepancy.

Ultimately, we think the reason Stanford does better in female sports is the same reason it brings home so many championships: The University cares about all sports, not just the stereotypical men’s powerhouses, football and basketball. (While the football team has lately been excellent, in general it is not: Over the past decade, it has won 47 percent of its games.) So while other schools focus on their men’s teams, Stanford puts comparatively more resources into its female teams, and enjoys more success. It also started building its female programs earlier, during an era when most schools couldn’t have cared less, creating a foundation that built on itself. (Stanford women’s basketball, founded in 1898, actually predates men’s basketball, and Stanford women’s tennis has been around since 1903.) Stanford’s differential success is testament to the gender inequality that still persists in sports – and to how well you can do when you value both genders equally.

Emma Pierson ‘13

Nat Roth ‘14