https://slate.com/culture/2012/03/b...e-there-so-few-jams-in-womens-basketball.html
march 23 2012 Why are there so few dunks in women’s basketball?
Baylor’s Brittney Griner became the second women ever to dunk a basketball in an NCAA tournament game Tuesday in a win over Florida. There are multiple dunks in every men’s game. Why are there so few jams in women’s basketball?
Leaping ability. The average WNBA player, at just under 6 feet, is about 7 inches shorter than her male counterpart. (Average data for all collegiate female players isn’t available.) Height is only part of the problem, though—plenty of 6-foot male players can dunk. The gender gap in vertical leaping ability is also substantial. The average female college basketball player has a vertical leap of approximately 19 inches, compared with more than 28 inches for the average male player.
The gender gap in leaping ability is wide at every level of competition. According to a 2004 study of medical students and their spouses, the average male in his 20s can out-jump 95 percent of females in the same age group. And men seem to have a peculiar advantage in jumping compared with other athletic pursuits. According to a study of world records for track and field events as of 2004, men had a 15 to 16 percent advantage (PDF) in high jump, long jump, and triple jump.
Researchers are still working out why men can jump so much higher than women, on average, but it clearly starts in puberty. Boys experience a spurt of muscle growth during the hormone surge, and their vertical leaping ability increases accordingly. Girls, in contrast, actually lose takeoff force during puberty. In addition, some studies have suggested that men have a higher ratio of fast-twitch to slow-twitch muscle fiber, which provides a substantial leaping advantage, although these results are controversial. The male physiology also seems to be more efficient at recruiting all the necessary muscles to work together to accomplish a task.
