Quantifying gender differences in physical performance: A developmental perspective.

The purpose was to quantify the contribution of anthropometric variables to gender differences in performance during childhood and adolescence. Measures of height, percentage body fat, and fat-free body weight were obtained for 2,142 students in Grades 3, 7, and 11 (ages 9, 13, and 17 years), and the subjects were tested on 6 motor tasks. Multivariate analysis of variance indicated that performance decrements resulting from greater adiposity affects boys and girls equally. Furthermore, this male–female similarity in the degree that fatness handicaps performance holds constant across grades. Percentage-variance analyses revealed that childhood gender differences are substantially influenced by anthropometric variables, with approximately 50% of between-gender variance being accounted for by fatness alone. Boys exhibited progressively greater performance superiority from Grade 3 to Grade 11. However, for specific tasks, there was an age-related decrease in the degree to which anthropometric variables contributed to these gender differences. This prompted the conclusion that with advancing age gender differences may become increasingly more a function of environmental factors. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)