I don’t know if it’s this way everywhere in the US, but where I grew up we had a boys baseball team and a girls softball team but no girls baseball team and vice versa. Why is this? Why are there two different, very similar sports that are separated by gender?
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It comes from old beliefs from many decades ago that girls should play less strenuous sports than boys.
As a Canadian woman (edit: with a history degree where I’ve specifically researched this) who played fastpitch softball throughout North America my whole life, I feel like I can answer this
First, it wasn’t invented as a woman’s sport. Slo-pitch softball was invented as an indoor alternative to baseball where you lob the pitch in. As it grew in popularity, the outdoor fastpitch format became popular amongst men and women, but because men had the opportunity to go pro for baseball and women didn’t, it maintained popularity among women moreso than men. There are also the sexist beliefs that got worked into this system to solidify it a bit more, but that’s the general gist.
For the record, there are (and have pretty much always been) many women’s baseball leagues and many men’s softball leagues. It’s not a definitive separation by any means.
Softball is easier than hardball. If you want to play competitively that’s one thing but the funding for women’s sports is poor. So it’s better to keep it casual and let women meet each other. I know a bunch of happily married couples who met on the softball field. I don’t know any married couples who met on a baseball field (though I am sure they are out there).
If you are interested in women’s baseball at all, check out Baseball for All. My daughter’s team of Western Washington University won the 2024 championship game. Seeing my daughter on MLB.com was a trip, I tell you what!
Back in the day we had much more… segregated rules about sports for girls and women. They weren’t allowed to run Marathons for the first ~40 years of the Olympics, there is a weird 6-on-6 version of basketball (3 per side, they couldn’t cross half court, and they had to play fixed positions on the court) they played until the 70s that survived into the 2000s in Kentucky/Tennessee high schools; of course softball vs. baseball, etc. 2-of-3 sets in tennis compared to 3-of-5 in mens. I’m sure there’s a ton more examples.
Here’s a recent article on women’s baseball which I happened to read earlier today: https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2025/04/yankees-womens-baseball-mini-fantasy-camp/681763/ (maybe paywalled)
Short answer is that the national Little League organization was dead-set against girls in baseball through the 70s for predictably sexist reasons. (“Too strenuous,” “could interfere with a future pregnancy,” etc.) Once Little League lost a court case and were forced to allow girls to play baseball, they still tried to steer girls toward the separate sport of softball to minimize girls’ participation in the coed baseball leagues. Softball then became firmly established for girls at all levels up through college and the Olympics, to the extent that it makes sense to focus on softball if you’re a female adolescent with inclination and talent for bat-and-ball sports.
Because mixing up sports keeps everyone on their toes
Why don’t male gymnasts do the balance beam?
Baseball Pitchers tend to blow out their arms and backs.
Most people don’t see the point of doing that kind of damage to their kid if their best hope is a partial scholarship to college.
I don’t know why there hasn’t been an actual attempt to answer this one. After little league, the dimensions of hardball diamonds go way up. The dimensions of softball diamonds don’t go up very much. This means much longer runs, much longer throws for baseball. Women don’t have the speed. They don’t have the arm strength.
Could a great softball player make the baseball team? Maybe. But why be a marginal player in baseball if you could be an outstanding player in softball?
Also, I wouldn’t want a woman batter facing a high school and up pitcher. They have the strength to throw hard but the accuracy often is not there. I don’t want men accidentally injuring women players who have less ability to react to a way to inside fastball.
This must be a troll… Because they’re girls, genius.