The History of Women and Sports
Throughout history women have fought for equality against men significantly in the last century. There have been several different cases where women have fought for uniformity and one of those cases is sports. Sports history is filled with men popularizing athletics such as baseball, basketball, boxing, football, track, and many more. It is quite surprising to many that women as well as men should take credit for their effort in athletic competition. Women have been known since the last 19th century to take part in sporting events when they were supposed to be prim and proper. Since the beginning of the 20th century more and more Americans were becoming more involved in football and baseball and many other events. "At the same time when women were streaming into education, the paid labor force, and political reform movements in unprecedented numbers." It has been "since the first female ballplayer circled the bases at Vassar College in 1866, sportswomen have taken their athletic experiences to heart." Sports do have a meaning to women. "What does sport mean to girls and women? 'The signal,' writes Ann Geracimos, 'for life to begin.'" Women are trained to do whatever they want to achieve. In the history of sports, women have d
It is another perfect example that women are athletes, but still wives and mothers. "In addition to enduring second-class athletic status and finding themselves the focal point of gender controversies, women in sport had the bridge the gulf between societal images of 'mannish' athletes and their own positive experience of sport and its compatibility with womanhood. In the All American Girls Professional Baseball League, "league organizers, almost all men, thought a feminine image would sell best; players wore uniform dresses on the field and read advice manuals on how to dress and apply makeup. " They were to take adequate classes, not drink alcohol and act like men. " Swoopes reportedly agreed to being photographed in this manner because "she didn't want anyone to think she felt ashamed of being pregnant. In 1997, the short-lived women's Sports Illustrated showed how women can be an athlete and a woman at the same time. Women have become coaches in the past years and the numbers have decreased. " This is just one of many examples of how women like to give out the message on their relationship of competitiveness and athleticism. It was like every single woman athlete in the country worked together as a team to battle through the media despair and to prove them wrong. This was proven by their very first cover shot of basketball star Sheryl Swoopes. So, when women became immersed into athleticism, they defined what "masculinity" is all about. In addition, the movie, A League of Their Own, was able to convince most Americans how women played the game back in the day and how well women played baseball. In 1912, there was an article in The Ladies Home Journal, "Are Athletics Making Girls Masculine?" Author Dudley Sargent wondered with the majority of people of whether females and sports would make females into "masculine facsimiles of the opposite sex.
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Acceptance Essays
