Is the Boston Marathon’s Selection Process Fair to Both Men and Women?

Many runners have strong opinions about Boston’s qualifying times and their selection process. People will inevitably complain that it’s unfair for one group or another.

I recently saw a post in a Facebook group suggesting that the process was unfair for women – and that the new qualifying times would make things more unfair. This prompted some serious discussion and some good questions about data. But it also prompted a lot of kneejerk reactions making the opposite claim – that the standards are actually biased against men.

I’ve written two articles that touch on this topic specifically:

• Are the Boston Qualifying Times Fair for All Age Groups?
• Is It Harder for a Man to Run a Marathon Under 3:00 or For a Woman to Finish Under 3:30?

Since then, I’ve also done some additional analysis on the changing demographics of marathon runners over the last 50 years.:

• How Have the Age and Gender of Runners at the NYC Marathon Changed?
• Analyzing the Changing Demographics of Marathon Finishers From 2010 to 2019

I thought this might be a good opportunity to combine a few of these ideas into a single post which addresses the basic question:

Is the Boston Marathon’s selection process fair for both men and women?

In the future, I plan to do a deeper dive on the new qualifying times using data that I’ve collected from the qualifying period for the 2024 Boston Marathon. So for now, I’ll only touch on that briefly and focus on the larger question.

Note that each of the articles listed above was originally published in Runner’s Life on Medium. They’re behind Medium’s paywall, but if you click through to any of the articles you can request that a special link be emailed to you to give you access to that article. In the post below, I’ll share some of the relevant data and visuals, but you may want to read the original analyses for additional details and context.

Here are the questions that we’ll address below. You can click the links to skip ahead, if you’d like:

1. What percentage of marathon finishers are women?
2. Does the gender distribution vary between age groups?
3. What percent of each age group meet their qualifying times?
4. Will the new qualifying times increase gender disparities at Boston?
5. What’s the breakdown of the field at the Boston Marathon?

What Percentage of Marathon Finishers Are Women?

A good place to start with this question is to explore the overall demographics of marathon runners.

If you rewind the clock 50 years, there were very few women participating in marathons. Until the late 1960’s, they weren’t allowed to register at all, and then a few brave trailblazers challenged those policies. By the early 1970’s, women could officially participate – but it would take a while before the field of most marathons became more balanced.

For a long term view of how this has changed, check out this article: How Have the Age and Gender of Runners at the NYC Marathon Changed. As late as the 1990’s, fields were still overwhelmingly male.

Recently, however, things have begun to balance out. I used a dataset comprised of a large number of American marathons to explore the distribution of age and gender from 2010 to 2019.

Here’s one of the visuals from that analysis, which tracks the percentage of the field made up of men and women over that time period. The sample consists of marathons run in the United States in September, October, or November – a collection that includes about 200,000 finishers per year.

At the beginning of the decade, the breakdown was about 59-41. By the end, it was between 57-43 and 56-44. It’s not parity, but it’s far more equal than things were in the 1980’s and 1990’s.

This is relevant because the gender breakdown of the finishers at the 2024 Boston Marathon was approximately 57-43. See this analysis of the 2024 Boston Marathon By the Numbers. And according to the numbers released by BAA when they announced the field for the 2025 Boston Marathon, the field of qualifiers is approximately 57% men and 43% women.

Generally speaking, the gender distribution at the Boston Marathon is similar to that of American marathoners at large.

Does the Gender Distribution Vary Between Age Groups?

Looking at the overall field has a way of hiding deeper patterns, though. On the surface, it may look like marathon fields are becoming more equal. But does that hold true among masters runners, as well?

The visual below is based on the same dataset as above – a large sample of fall marathons in the United States from 2010 to 2019. It displays the relative percent of the field made up of men and women for each age group.

Use the slider at the top to adjust the year.

In 2010, you can see that the left half of the chart is fairly balanced. But as you move to the right – towards older age groups – it becomes increasingly unbalanced.

Among runners in their 70’s, the breakdown is approximately 90-10.

As you progress through the 2010’s, things become slightly more equal. However, the general pattern is the same. It’s more balanced among younger runners, and increasingly unbalanced among older runners.

By 2010, women make up a (small) majority of runners in their 20’s. The split is approximately 55-45 for runners in their 30’s, and even through the 40’s it’s less than 60-40.

But among runners in their 70’s, the split is still around 80-20. Overwhelmingly male.

This is quite likely a product of history. People tend to start running when they’re younger. If you ask most runners when they started running, it was probably in their 20’s or 30’s. Maybe their early 40’s.

Someone who was 70 in 2019 was born in 1949. They would have been in their 20’s in the 1970’s. At that time, Title IX was brand new, and barely more than a handful of women ran marathons. Meanwhile, the first running boom was beginning – and hundreds and thousands of men were running marathons every year.

But as Gen X and Millennial women get into their 60’s and 70’s, this will likely start to change. They grew up in an age when it was more common for women to run – and these larger cohorts of younger runners will eventually translate into larger cohorts of masters runners.

What Percent of Each Age Group Meet Their Qualifying Times?

Regardless of how many men and women there are in each age group – are the qualifying times set so that a similar percentage of them can actually qualify?

I looked at this in a previous analysis: Are the Boston Qualifying Times Fair for All Age Groups?

In that analysis, I used a sample that included all finishers at American marathons in 2023 with at least 500 finishers to see what percentage of runners met their qualifying times.

The results are displayed in the visual below. Blue bars represent women and purple bars represent men.

Generally speaking, women qualify at a slightly higher rate than men of the same age group.

For example, 17.72% of women 45-49 met their qualifying times, compared to 16.39% of men. The qualification rates are always within 1% to 2% of each other, though.

Some people (men) complain that the difference between the male and female qualifying times (30 minutes) is too large. But, as I explained in this article, men finish under 3:00 at similar rates as women finish under 3:30.

A slightly higher proportion of women meet the 3:30 mark, and you could make the case that 3:25 is a closer equivalent to 3:00. But the 10-15 minute difference seen among elite runners is definitely not applicable to runners on the cusp of qualifying.

The much bigger difference is across age groups. Runners under 35 see the lowest qualification rates – 10.97% for women and 9.72% for men. This increases with age, despite a small dip among runners in their 50’s, and it peaks for runners in their 60’s.

About 20% of runners in their 60’s meet their qualifying times. Almost twice the rate of runners in their 20’s and 30’s.

One major outlier here is women over 80, but that is likely because the number of women over 80 in the sample is incredibly small. Without a sufficient sample size, it’s easy for a handful of outliers to distort things.

Based on this analysis, one might conclude that women have a slightly easier time qualifying for Boston. But to the extent that there are imbalances in the process, it is older runners of both genders who have significant advantages. And the data does not support a conclusion that the standards for women are softer by a wide margin.

Will the New Qualifying Times Increase Gender Disparities at Boston?

I want to return to this question – and more importantly, the question of age – with another look at the data from the 2025 qualifying period. The new qualifying times shift the time down for runners under 60, and it leaves the times along runners 60+.

So the logical conclusion is that this will make it much easier – relatively speaking – for runners 60+ to qualify. And as we saw above, they already qualify at much higher rates than younger runners.

But what about the differences between men and women?

I had used the data from finishers in 2023 to see how a potential cutoff time might impact the distribution of the field. I calculated the number of finishers in each age group that would qualify, given a specific cutoff from 0 to 10 minutes.

Here’s the baseline – what things look like with the old qualifying times and a zero cutoff.

You can hover over individual blocks to see how big they are – both in terms of an absolute number of qualifiers and in terms of the percentage of the overall field.

The overall breakdown skews slightly towards men – but it’s the same 57-43% breakdown we saw above.

And again, it varies with age. For runners under 35, the breakdown is 54-46. From 45-49, it’s 55-45. And it shifts all the way to 70-30 for runners 60-64, and continues to tilt from there.

What happens if we use the new qualifying times instead?

What changes?

The overall distribution between men and women is roughly the same. Still 53-47.

But the age dynamics shift considerably.

Men under 35 drop from 16.85% of qualifiers to 14.91%, and women under 35 drop from 14.30% of qualifiers to 13.70%.

Right on the cusp – 55-59 – of the changes, the absolute number of runners qualifying drops slightly. But their overall share of the qualifying field increases. Men go from 4.63% to 4.73%, and women go from 2.77% to 2.89%.

Meanwhile, on the other side of the changes, men 60-64 go from 3.61% to 4.68% and women go from 1.85% to 2.40%.

The changes do little to reshape the qualifying field along gender lines, but they will make it much harder for younger runners to qualify vis-a-vis their 60+ counterparts.

What’s the Breakdown of the Field at the Boston Marathon?

Finally, what does the actual field of runners at Boston look like?

The visual below plots the percent of finishers at each Boston Marathon from 2019 to 2024, based on their gender and age group. Note that this includes both time qualifiers and other entrants – like charity runners and international tours.

Yes, in every year there are more men than women across the entire field. But look at the relative balance of the younger runners.

In each of the five years, there are more women under 35 than their are men. Since the pandemic – 2022-24 – that age group has been a little over 50% women.

From 35 to 49, the balance is around 55-45 in favor of men, give or take a percentage point. So slightly more balanced than the overall field (57-43).

As you progress into the older age groups, things skew more and more heavily male. For runners in their 50’s, it’s 60+% male. For runners in their 60’s, it’s 70%. And for runners in their 70’s, it gets close to 80%. However, these numbers track with the overall breakdown of the running population.

Of the three post-pandemic races – 2022, 2023, and 2024 – the final race is the only one that had a cut-off time. It’s 5:29 cutoff gives us some insight into how the field shifts when qualifying times are lower.

And there’s no real difference in terms of the gender dynamic between these three years. But there is a difference when it comes to age.

In 2024, with a deep cutoff, the proportion of runners under 50 shrinks and the proportion of runners over 50 increases. This is true for both men and women.

Focus on the dividing line between the orange (45-49) age group and the yellow (50-54), and you can easily see that the younger age groups compress slightly and the older age groups expand. And this is in a year where the 5 minute cutoff applies equally to all age groups.

The dynamic will be magnified next year, when younger age groups need to meet a tougher qualifying time and older age groups continue to use the older qualifying time.

So Are the Qualifying Times Fair?

At the end of the day, that’s a value judgement. And the data alone can’t decide that question one way or the other.

But the data does provide a set of facts from which to proceed.

1. In the 1980’s and 90’s, very few women ran marathons.
2. In recent years, approximately 43% of marathon finishers are women.
3. Among younger runners in their 20’s, a slight majority of marathon finishers are women.
4. The proportion of women to men shrinks as you move up the age spectrum, and women make up only about 20% of runners in their 70’s.
5. When you compare runners of the same age groups, a similar percentage of runners meet their Boston qualifying times. Women qualify at a slightly higher rate, but the difference is small.
6. When you compare runners of different age groups, older runners are much more likely to meet their Boston qualifying times than younger runners.
7. The field at Boston is approximately 57% men and 43% women, which mirrors the overall running population.
8. The new qualifying times will do little to alter the gender dynamics at Boston, but they will change the age distribution. Older runners in their 60’s and above will have a much easier time qualifying.

So what do you think? Are the qualifying times fair – and if you would adjust them, how would you do so?

If you’re interested in this topic, I’d also recommend reading Better Faster Farther: How Running Changed Everything We Know About Women by Maggie Mertens. It provides a lot of historical context.

I finished the book last weekend, and I still need to find the time to write a review. I’ve got a few nits to pick, but overall it’s an interesting read, a series of well told stories, and some important history.