Why do sports discriminate against women?

I just saw on Twitter that High School Lax is going to change and make the goals 2" smaller for girls.  It gets me back to one of my biggest peev's: why do sports treat women different than men? Let's look at sports in general: Girls play softball instead of hardball, why? Girls hockey doesn't allow checking, why? Women's tennis plays two sets out of three instead of three out of five, why? Women's basketball games are shorter in length than men's why? Women tee off hundreds of yards ahead of men in golf, why? Why is girls lacrosse 180 degrees different from men's lax?

The only team sport that allows men and women to play by the same set of rules is soccer.  Same game length, same rules regarding heading/tackling/size of field, etc...  Why? Because that's the right thing to do for sports.  You don't see women running a 20.2 mile marathon do you? You don't see women swimming a 40M breaststroke instead of a 50M do you?  It's this stupidity that leads to girls growing up feeling inferior to boys and which prevents many from competing with men on equal footing.  It's the whole "you're the weaker sex" attitude that pervades youth, HS, College and pro sports.  Why not let women check in hockey, have contact in Lax, play 3 of 5 sets in tennis, play 48 minute basketball games-they are in just as good of shape as men aren't they?  The can run marathons but can't play 48 minute basketball games?  They can swim 800M races but can only play 2 of 3 set tennis matches?

This is one reason why my I chose soccer and running for my four daughters: equality with men.  Maybe your time in a race isn't as good as Johnny's but at least you both ran the same distance and look at all of those boys that you beat!!! Isn't that what sports should be trying to promote rather than "let's move the tee box up 80 yards to give Susie an advantage over the boys because she needs it to score the same"???

Let's stop distinguishing between men and women sports.  Make one set of rules/one size fields/one length of games and stop telling our young girls you need something that boys don't in order to compete.  There are no edges given in the real world so why do we do it in sports?