I've seen this debated hardcore on letsrun and runnersworld.
Consensus is that it is harder for men to BQ than women with the current BAA standards. It's not ridiculously uneven, but almost all the people who have studied this acknowledge that it is easier for women to BQ at any age bracket compared to men given relative performances.
A big reason for this discrepancy is that the BAA seems to strive for roughly 50:50 M:F parity in terms of race participation. The moment you start cranking up the difficulty of the female BQ, you start losing that parity and you start getting more male-heavy participation.
Anecdotally from what I've seen, the 'hardcore' female runners often find the BQ so easy that they often don't even bother participating. And when I say 'hardcore', I'm not talking super-elites; I'm just generalizing to women who run in the 70mpw range, regardless of speed.
Consensus is that it is harder for men to BQ than women with the current BAA standards. It's not ridiculously uneven, but almost all the people who have studied this acknowledge that it is easier for women to BQ at any age bracket compared to men given relative performances.
A big reason for this discrepancy is that the BAA seems to strive for roughly 50:50 M:F parity in terms of race participation. The moment you start cranking up the difficulty of the female BQ, you start losing that parity and you start getting more male-heavy participation.
Anecdotally from what I've seen, the 'hardcore' female runners often find the BQ so easy that they often don't even bother participating. And when I say 'hardcore', I'm not talking super-elites; I'm just generalizing to women who run in the 70mpw range, regardless of speed.