Isovariant mappings of degree 1 and the Gap Hypothesis

Unpublished results of S Straus and W Browder state that two notions of homotopy equivalence for manifolds with smooth group actions - isovariant and equivariant - often coincide under a condition called the Gap Hypothesis; the proofs use deep results in geometric topology. This paper analyzes the difference between the two types of maps from a homotopy theoretic viewpoint more generally for degree one maps if the manifolds satisfy the Gap Hypothesis, and it gives a more homotopy theoretic proof of the Straus-Browder result.