The desert has shrunk. The entry age of men for masters competition will now be the same as women: 35 (pending a rubber stamp by the IAAF). This is long overdue — and represents the first fundamental change in defining masters since David Pain initiated the men 40/women 35 entry ages in the late 1960s. Besides meaning a huge potential influx in participants (and corresponding increase in revenues for WMA and national governing bodies), it also helps grow the sport by making track and field accessible to to an age group that in the past has been limited to mainly elite/open events.

Why the original 35/40 women/men discrepancy in masters ages? I described the history thusly once during a profile of masters pioneer Pain:
But what should the age cutoff be? Pain noticed that most of the interested athletes, like himself, were in their 40s — and that runners in their 30s still competed in open meets. So 40 would become the entry point to masters competition. Later, Pain noticed that the wives and girlfriends of masters entrants were about five years younger. So age 35 became the rubicon for female masters.
Meanwhile, Suzy Hess of National Masters News also has filled in some other blanks on the General Assembly votes.
Hess, publisher of NMN and vice chair of USATF Masters, writes (and I add my comments):
2. We voted to RETAIN term limits for officers!
(Thank goodness! If WMA had allowed WMA Council members to run for office forever, entrenched politicos could accumulate even more clout than they have now. They’d be able to extend more favors to various affiliates, thus ensuring a calcification of the WMA leadership — which is old enough (and white enough) now as is.)
3. Having a World Indoor meet passed.
(This is good.)
4. Having it in Sindelfingen, Germany for 2004 passed.
(This is not so good. WMA delegates betrayed their Eurocentric outlook by voting to have the WMA hold three consecutive world meets in Europe — Germany (2004 indoors), Spain (2005 outdoors) and Italy (2007 outdoors). And this despite New York’s acknowledged supremacy after WMA inspections. Was the inspection report ever made available to WMA delegates?)
5. The World Masters Games shall be an item on the agenda for each General
Assembly.
(As it should be, since these Games threaten to make WMA world meets moot. And with WMA President Torsten Carlius a member of the International Masters Games Association governing board, whose interests are being served first?)
6. Change in the By Law for conflict of interest by a Council Member was
withdrawn by U.S.
(This is very interesting — the USATF withdrawing its proposal to explicitly discourage WMA Council profiteering. It’s possible that existing WMA rules and bylaws already prohibit such conflicts of interest, but then what would be the harm in coming right out and saying so?)
7. Changes in the implements for women’s events was defeated.
(That’ll save a lot of people some bread.)
8. The weight (throw) as an individual WMA event at the indoor and outdoor was
approved!
(As expected — since the weight throw is part of the weight pentathlon, already a WMA world meet staple. This is a big victory for USA throwers, since Americans are big into this hammer-like event.)
9. WMA will reconsider the events in the men’s and women’s outdoor pentathlon.
(And who will be in charge of this review? And when will final decisions be made? By the WMA Council or the General Assembly?)
10. Adopting the current rule regarding the IAAF false start was defeated. It
will remain the same as in the past for masters.
(Thank goodness. Masters don’t need the headache of traveling thousands of miles for an event only to be DQ’d for a twitch. The current rules are adequate to punish flyer-seekers.)
11. Only one competition number shall be required in throwing events — passed.
(Wonderful that WMA should tackle such serious and substantive issues.)