Ultra marathon runner earns awards for both first place woman and overall winner

Re:Ultra marathon runner earns awards for both first place w... by dTal on Tuesday August 20, 2019 @08:07AM (#20745942)

Doesn't seem sexist to me, given that the reason this is a headline is because it has never happened before. Historically, the assumption that a man will win is completely grounded. I also note that the two awards are physically identical except for the text.

What system would be better, here? A single award? That's just the same system as now, minus the female award - now women almost never take home a prize. Separate but equal "mens" and "womens" awards, labeled as such? Now you aren't recognizing the "overall" winner at all. Perhaps three awards - mens, womens, and outright? Might be a good idea for cases like this where the best man gets nothing, but for the majority of cases all you've done is hand another award to the man.

Remember, this is a headline because it's an edge case. Edge cases are a poor guide for good policy.

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Re:Ultra marathon runner earns awards for both first place w... by chrisoverzero on Tuesday August 20, 2019 @08:21AM (#20746060)

> […] it has never happened before.

FTA:

> “Obviously there’s a lot of great women runners, but you don’t see them winning ultras outright a lot. When it happens, they get two awards.”

Sounds as though it’s infrequent, but not unprecedented.

> Edge cases are a poor guide for good policy.

Consider this situation to have been a bug in a production environment. Would you advise your junior developers not to patch it, or write unit tests for it? Edge cases are where the rubber meets the road.

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