Women and Sports in the United States: A Documentary Reader

by Jean O'Reilly, Susan K. Cahn

Overview

A spectacular transformation in women’s sports has occurred over the past century in colleges, high schools, and recreational leagues across the nation. Gradual changes during the late 1950s and 1960s within the fields of women’s physical education and amateur sport provided the initial energy for this transformation. But it took the rebirth of a grassroots feminist movement in the late 1960s and 1970s to catalyze the radical changes in women’s athletic opportunities and attitudes toward female athletes. The assimilation of feminist principles into the broader popular culture solidified the belief that sport plays a positive role in the lives of girls and women. Political activists for women’s rights codified this attitude with the passage of Title IX of the 1972 Federal Education Amendments, a law banning gender discrimination in educational settings, thus guaranteeing women’s legal right to an equitable share of athletic opportunities and resources. Though the sea change in American women’s sports is evident in schools, the media, and local playing fields, scholars are still in the early stages of fully examining the causes and impacts of this historic change. Women and Sports in the United States brings together scholarly articles, journalism, political and legal documents, and first-person accounts that collectively explore women’s sports in America, with emphasis on the post–Title IX era.This book was published with the generous support of the Center for the Study of Sport in Society at Northeastern University.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781555536718
Publisher:	Northeastern University Press
Publication date:	02/28/2007
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	406
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 1.20(d)

About the Author

JEAN O’REILLY holds a Ph.D. in English and American Studies from the University of East Anglia in England. She teaches courses on women’s sports films at the University of Connecticut.SUSAN K. CAHN, Associate Professor of History at the State University of New York at Buffalo, is the author of the award-winning Coming on Strong: Gender and Sexuality in Twentieth-Century Women’s Sports (1994) and is widely recognized as one of the top scholars of women’s sports history.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments
Timeline: 125 Years of U.S. Women in Sports - Compiled by Susan K. Cahn and Jean O’Reilly
Pioneering Women in Sport
Olympic Women: A Struggle for Recognition - Jennifer Hargreaves
How I Learned to Ride the Bicycle
Frances E. Willard
The World-Beating Viking Girl of Texas - No Author Attribution
Playing Nice: Politics and Apologies in Women’s Sports
Mary Jo Festle
Pioneers - J. E. Vader
Riggs Butchered by Ms. King as Promoters Score a Million - Charles Maher
“Mia” Culpa: The All–Too Quiet Retirement of Mia Hamm - David Zirin
Negotiating Masculinity and Femininity: The Female Athlete as Oxymoron
The Significance of Basket Ball for Women - Senda Berenson
Are Athletics Making Girls Masculine?: A Practical Answer to a Question Every Girl Asks - Dudley A. Sargent, M.D.
All-American Girls Professional Baseball League Rules of Conduct, 1943–1954 - The All-American Girls Professional Baseball League
Psychosocial Impacts of Athletic Participation on American Women: Facts and Fables - Don Sabo
Throwing Like a Girl - James Fallows
Living the Paradox: Female Athletes Negotiate Femininity and Muscularity - Vikki Krane, Precilla Y. L. Choi, Shannon M. Baird, Christine M. Aimar, and Kerrie J. Kauer
Competing Bodies: Physiological, Biological, and Psychological Issues
Chromosome Count - Alison Carlson
Closing the Muscle Gap - Ann Crittenden
Understanding the Female Athlete Triad - Irene McCormick
Women and ACL Injuries: Taking the Bad News with the Good - Maureen Madden, PT, CSCS
Catastrophic Injuries in Female Athletes: Cheerleading Leads the List - Robert C. Cantu, M.D., and Frederick O. Mueller, Ph.D.
Women, Disability, and Sport and Physical Fitness Activity: The Intersection of Gender and Disability Dynamics - Elaine M. Blinde and Sarah G. McCallister
Anabolic Steroids: The Gremlins of Sport - Terry Todd
Eating Disorders and Gymnastics - Ana Cintado
The Silence of Great Distance: Women Running Long - Frank Murphy
Coming Home - Joli Sandoz
Stronger Women - Mariah Burton Nelson
Building Inequality into Sport: Institutionalized Bias
Structural Constraints Facing Women in Sport - Nancy Theberge and Susan Birrell
Half-Court Basketball: Power and Sex - Heather Ross Miller
“I Can See the Finish Line” - Mark Starr
Courting Destiny - Raquel Cepeda
The Cold Wars: Inside the Secret World of Figure Skating - Joan Ryan
Rooting for Michelle: Finding Contradictions at the Winter Olympics - Bill Wong
Breaking Cultural Traditions: Culture, Family Play Role in Sports for Latina Girls - Maryjo Sylwester
On the Rez - Ian Frazier
Sexuality and Sport
Changing the Game: Homophobia, Sexism, and Lesbians in Sport - Pat Griffin
Homophobia Alleged in University of Florida Softball - Jim Buzinski
Less Ugly - Lesléa Newman
Sex, Lies, and Volleyball - Cynthia Hanson
In the Buff: Female Athletes Take It All Off - Penny Hastings
A New Image Exposed - Tom Maloney
The Feminine Image in Sports and Sports Media
Separating the Men from the Girls: The Gendered Language of Televised Sports - Michael Messner, Margaret Carlisle Duncan, and Kerry Jensen
Sport and Society Broadcast for Friday, August 16, 1996 - Richard C. Crepeau
The Women’s Sports Film as the New Melodrama - Jean O’Reilly
It’s Time to Tell the Bloody Truth - Lorie Conway
Bloodsport: Woman’s First Pro Fight Is Her Last - Joe Posnanski
Offensive Interference - Sherry Ricchiardi
Law and Equity: Title IX and Its Aftermath
Title IX, Education Amendments of 1972: Title 20 U.S.C. Sections 1681–1688 - U.S. Department of Labor
Title IX Media Helper - Women’s Sports Foundation
Brown University Agrees to Guarantee Participation Rates for Women Athletes and Funding for Contested Women’s Teams - Trial Lawyers for Public Justice
Title IX at 30: Report Card on Gender Equity—Athletics, C+ - The National Coalition for Women and Girls in Education
A Train Wreck Called Title IX - George F. Will
In the Spirit of Title IX - Emily Badger
Title IX—The Good News, the Bad News - California Women’s Law Center
Index

What People are Saying About This

Pat Griffin

"O'Reilly and Cahn have compiled an extrordinary historical anthology of women's sports in the U.S. Their inclusion of original documents from each era and careful selection of knowledgeable writers make this book an absorbing and authoritative read for anyone interested in women's journey toward sports equality."
— Pat Griffin, Professor Emerita, University of Massachusetts, Amherst

From the Publisher

"O'Reilly and Cahn have compiled an extraordinary historical anthology of women's sports in the U.S. Their inclusion of original documents from each era and careful selection of knowledgeable writers make this book an absorbing and authoritative read for anyone interested in women's journey toward sports equality."—Pat Griffin, professor emerita, University of Massachusetts, Amherst

Editorial Reviews

There is no stronger means to demonstrate the complexities of gendered politics on women’s place in sport in contemporary settings than watching them play out across time. O’Reilly and Cahn present us with a series of essays that do just that as they use history as a guide to help situate how more present-day issues and tensions surrounding women and sport emerge, take root, get challenged, and sometimes persist. It is the sum of the various stories, essays, and articles presented in the text that afford readers an opportunity to contextualize and critically examine female sport experience.”—Journal of Sport History

“The book . . . offers an excellent education in the tribulations and triumphs faced by American sportswomen from 1882 to 2005, and is organized in a way that . . . helps readers develop both historical knowledge and analytical insight into contemporary sport and gender relations.”—University of Buffalo News Center

“A welcome addition to the sports science literature, which should appeal to all those who want to immerse themselves in American sports culture in general and the position of women in the United States in particular.”—Nordic Sports Studies Forum

From the Publisher