1. 1 Women’s Sport Through the Lens of History C H A P T E R
Ellen J. Staurowsky, EdD, Drexel University
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2. Learning Objectives
How Victorian ideals of female inferiority and male superiority have shaped sport in the present day
How the lived experiences of women and girls in sport often do not match the popular medical and scientific narratives that have been used to justify the limited participation of female athletes in formal sport activities
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3. Learning Objectives (continued)
How the past continues to influence opportunities available to women in sport

4. Women’s Education in the Late 1800s
Men assigned to the public sphere and women the domestic sphere, so education for women intended to prepare them for their roles as wives and mothers

5. Beliefs About Women and Education
Too much education rendered a woman “manly, indelicate, and unsexed” (Sack & Staurowsky, 1998)
Women who were too smart were thought unmarriageable
As late as 1930s, 80% of American school districts employed no married women
Sack, A., & Staurowsky, E.J. (1998). College athletes for hire: The evolution and legacy of the NCAA amateur myth. Westport, CT: Praeger Press.
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6. Beliefs About Women and Education (continued)
Women were to be seen and not heard
In a school setting, even when a woman was at the top of her class, her valedictory address would have to be delivered by a man
Progressive Oberlin College would wait two decades after admitting women before a woman was permitted to speak at a graduation

7. Perceived Negative Effects of Women’s Education
Brainwork eroded women’s health
Believed to cause a litany of illnesses including neuralgia, dyspepsia, hysteria, and other derangements of the nervous system

8. The Bicycle a Threat to Femininity
Women warned against riding a bike for fear of acquiring a “bicycle face”
Women discouraged from wearing comfortable clothing while riding a bike
Women were thought to be more vulnerable to acquiring bad social habits as a result of bicycle riding (using slang, going out without being accompanied by a male)

9. Victorian Ideas About Women’s Health and Physical Activity
Women were born with a limited amount of vital energy
To fulfill her role as a mother and to bear children, a woman needed to expend her energies in the right way, not in frivolous activities such as sport
Rigorous physical activity for women was seen as an unnecessary strain

10. Women’s Physical Education and the Fair but Weaker Sex
Women’s physical education developed to address public suspicion that women would collapse from the pressure of academic work
Elizabeth Blackwell, the first female physician in the United States, identified exercise for women as the first law of life
As more women became college students, greater need for female physical educators

11. Liberating Women From Fashionable Clothes
Women’s fashion was an impediment to safe and fun sport participation
Women in the late 1800s might wear as much as 20 pounds of clothes (15 layers of crinolines and petticoats, skirts skimmed the floor, starched camisoles)
Dress reform movement: free women from the trap of their clothes
Replacing corset with bloomer costume

12. Introducing Women’s Basketball
Senda Berenson introduced basketball at Smith College in 1897
Adapted Naismith’s rules for women by dividing court into three sections, restricting the number of dribbles, length of time allowed to hold the ball, rules against aggressive play
Clara Baer at Sophie Newcomb College: even more restrictive game called basquette