The common argument in favor of Mixed being a worse division than Open or Women's is something along the lines of this: There aren't enough elite players to go around and most elite players choose single gender ultimate, thus the players that populate the ranks of Mixed are inherently not as skilled.
I would like to try out some thought experiments and see if this argument holds up. I'll be using Nationals-level squads as my example since some people believe that this argument remains true even at the Nationals level.
Let's imagine a Fake City/Area where there are 20 Elite ultimate players and 40 High level players combined of each gender. To make the math even let's says it's a nice 50/50 split, 10 Elite men, 10 Elite women, 20 High level men, 20 High level women.
(We can argue about the difference between elite and high level but I don't think that really affects anything that much. I think one can agree there is a difference between the talent at the top of a roster and the bottom.)
The talent in our fake city could distribute itself a number of ways.
A. The Mixed Stereotype
This distribution says that all or most of the elite players will play single gender ultimate. Let's say 9 elite from each gender go play single gender leaving 2 to the mixed team. The distribution would look as follows.
Men: E9/H11 Mixed: E2/H18 Women: E9/H11
I think in this scenario it would be clear that the mixed team would be "worse" than the single gender teams simply as a byproduct of having a fewer number of elite players. (Obviously this discounts things like coaching and chemistry which we will not account for in this piece.)
B. The Stacked Mixed
This distribution says that the Fake City's players realize there are only 20 elite players and so decide to join forces in their quest for a National Championship. Let's say 18 of our elite players decide to join forces, the talent distribution would look like this:
Men: E1/H19 Mixed: E18/H2 Women:E1/H19
In this distribution we should say that the Mixed team is CLEARLY better than the single gender teams.
C. The "Even" Split
If our Fake City players all chose their teams randomly we would end up with a relatively even distribution.
Men: E7/H13 Mixed: E6/H14 Women: E7/H13
The numbers don't work out perfectly (and reflect some bias on my part), but none of these teams are clearly better than any of the others.
So let's look at some specific areas and teams going back 5 years to 2012
Denver is a clear example of distribution A. Johnny Bravo and Molly Brown have made nationals every year in that span, and been at the top of their division most years. Meanwhile no mixed team from Denver has made Nationals in that time span. Boulder Love Tractor did make Nationals starting in 2015 but without intimate knowledge of how much (if any) talent they draw from Denver it is hard for me to justify including them in the Denver playing pool.
Iowa (as far as I can find) have only sent 1 team to Nationals in the past 5 years, Chad Larson Experience in the mixed division. CLX was in the upper echelons of the divisions the years they made Nationals. I think it's fair to say Iowa is an obvious example of distribution B.
A true distribution C city seems hard to find but it appears Philadelphia is as close to a distribution C city as we get in real life. All three divisions have made Nationals at least twice in that span, with AMP leading the way qualifying in all 5 Nationals. AMP, along with Green Means Go and Patrol have all had drastically different results, with little consistency across their finishes from year to year.
Lastly, we have our Meccas. Cities with such massive amounts of talent that people move their to play. Cities like (you can probably guess them) Boston, San Fransisco, and Seattle. Our distribution model doesn't hold up well as it appears those areas have enough Elite players to field multiple teams in multiple divisions at Nationals.
With the variety of distributions certain cities and areas posses I think it is difficult to outright claim that Mixed is "worse" than single gender. The "best" way to quantitatively determine this that I can think of is by doing Nationals finish analysis comparing average finish in a city across division. (Which I don't have time for now.)
That being said for proponents of the Mixed division I have something to share. If you play in Mixed I totally understand that being told you are worse than another (rightly or wrongly) sucks. When discussing with someone who holds the belief that Mixed is worse than single gender consider their background. Does their background come from a distribution A area? Maybe illuminating the diversity of ultimate communities will help you in swinging them to your side.
