Ch 4 Separate World, Separate Lives, Separate Sporting Models

Ch 4 by Lynn Couturier and Stevie Chepko in Women In Sport Greta

Cohen, Ed. Notes by N. Bailey

Introduction to Ch. 4&5: History• The next two chapters are a historical

view of the issues and controversies around women in sport within the context of the women’s liberation movements

• Places women’s sporting experiences in the context of various historical eras in which the events occurred

The Culture of Differences

• Defines women as different or subordinate to men

• Current issues and controversies rooted in the old idea of differences & subordination

• Women first and women only was a strategy for women to gain power within this culture of differences (self-define)

Women Are Not Men

• Women have been defined by what they are not. (How women differ from men defined them)

• If women are different from men, their place in culture must be different from men.

• Victorian ideas of fundamental nature of women – inferior to men

• Sport: where boys learned to be men

Men First, Men Only

• 1840’s: Social reform grows out of the Second Great Awakening, a Protestant fostered religious revival

• Muscular Christianity movement associated moral righteousness with physical activity.

• England to the U.S.; Luther Gulick, James Naismith, Fred Leonard proponents of the crusade

Instill Christian Values Through Sport (1890-1900)• Philosophical justification for sport in the

schools• Democracy was taught on the playing

fields and playgrounds to immigrant boys.

• Lessons in democracy: competition, courage, sportsmanship.

• Gulick’s Public School Athletic League

PSAL

• Originally separate from the Board of Education

• Track meet in Madison Square Garden 1903• Baseball, track and field, marksmanship• A test of manhood• A way for men to differentiate themselves

from women (testing manliness via sport)

Gulick Writings: Sport & Manliness• “…boyhood and manhood have thus for

ages long been tested and produced by athletic sports. Athletic sports are thus, to some extent at least, a measure of manhood.” ref text p.60

• Girls not allowed; they can folk dance• Era of industrialization, so the farmer

moved to town

Three Functions of New Sports Creed• 1st - Improvement of public health in

cities

• 2nd - Morality and pass on the values of the middle class culture

• 3rd - Character building, particularly about controlling sexual urges

Sport and Manly Qualities

• Strength, physical skill, and courage accepted by the middle class culture ideal for young men

• Participation by a male in any female activity called into question his manhood

• Football became the epitome of manly sport

Football: Catalyst for Intercollegiate Sport • 1890’s football embraced by eastern

colleges

• Students controlled and organized the competition between colleges.

• Games were violent. Some students died.

• By 1905 President Roosevelt called a meeting to discuss the future of football

Outcomes of that Presidential Meeting• Formation of the Intercollegiate Athletic

Association of the U.S. 1905• 1910 changed their name to the NCAA• Faculty control at the college level• Philosophy of the Muscular Christians

spread to the high schools and they also adopted the sporting model

• Men only, moral domination in culture

More Than A Game

• “Sport in the U.S. in the male sphere of influence had wide-ranging implications for women’s participation.” p. 62

• “If sport was how culture indoctrinated males into the male sphere, how could women ever challenge the model?” p.62

• “The culture of differences ensured male hegemony over sport.” p.62

Women First, Women Only

• For decades following the Civil War, Women’s place: private, domestic

• Women’s and men’s roles complementary• Science of the day: superiority of white ruling

class• Anthropometric craze of the time –women

physically and intellectually weaker• However, women superior to men, morally and

spiritually

Conservation of Energy Theory

• Related to the spermatic economy theory: finite amount of vital force or energy.

• One area of activity sapped another• So, over-expending in unnecessary areas to be

avoided• Function of woman was motherhood, so save

energy for that• Presumed connection between nervous system

and reproductive organs; avoid shock, etc.

Women’s Frailty

• “If women were at risk in institutions of higher learning, wouldn’t they be at an even greater risk on the playing field?”

• This notion didn’t apply to African American women. They toiled long hours: as domestics, farm workers,wage workers in mills and factories. Physically demanding jobs

Women Not So Frail

• Immigrant Population: Women’s work needed to sustain the family

• College would unsex women• Beecher argued for women becoming the

teachers for they were ideally suited for working with children

• Light exercise as a means of protecting against the rigors of college

Female Physical Educators & Physicians• Unique role. Only faculty member with

responsibility for student health• Tracked student health via anthropometric

measures • Maintained status by insisting on female

leadership for female students• Good manners important to their survival as

professionals. Paranoia about appearing unfeminine.

“The Gibson Girl”

• New Woman was more athletic and more engaged in the world around her

• Played a variety of sports and games. • Clothing styles changed to accommodate

movement• Early feminist movement: suffrage, own

property, labor activism, benevolent societies

Our Foremothers in Physical Education & the University• Men held the vote, so the movement had to

appeal to the men. • Need to domesticate politics• Physical Educators mirrored college

educated women of the era: single, dedicated, influential old girls network

• Social activists: Settlement houses, Ida B. Wells’ campaign against lynching, unionists

Women’s Relationships

• Men were thought to require sexual restraint• Women were not sexual• Women’s relationships with other women

flourished. Called romantic friendships• Didn’t threaten men because women were thought

to be asexual• Homosocial world: Wellesley & Amy Morris

Homans at the Boston Normal School in 1908

Key Themes of These Leaders

• Female scholars were intellectuals challenging women’s domestic roles

• Formed supportive and cohesive communities that embraced reform, rejected marriage, and pursued careers; and 3rd

• Experienced a tremendous backlash in the 1920’s

The Backlash

• Attack on the homosocial world created by these women

• Eugenicists cried “race suicide” since less than half married.

• Fear than immigrants would supplant the older American stock

• Plus Freud’s sexuality theories embraced by culture: female friendships “deviant”

Separate Sphere Maintained

• CWA governed BB, and then field hockey, swimming, track and field, and soccer.

• Committees made the rules, published them• Invented the policies governing

participation• Overlap between several organizations’

leadership• Competition within schools v. inschool

Girl Scout PresidentMrs. Herbert Hoover• Instrumental in the formation of the

Women’s Division of the National Amateur Athletic Federation: national standards for; women’s sport competition

• Women in Phys Educ ruled• Not so with the AAU which sent a women’s

track & field team to Paris in 1922• The women said horrible thing to do. P.73 .

Separate Spheres Survived

• But not wholly intact• Maintaining femininity while participating

in politics, education, sport was essential for acceptance of women by culture.

• Sport participation was problematic: femininity needed to be maintained

• Relied on female uniqueness requiring female leadership

The end

That’s All For This Slide Show