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Challenging gendered boundaries
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2.4.3. Challenging gendered boundaries
Not all the middle- and upper-class women were content to remain on the periphery of the action, sporting or otherwise. As of 1848, a feminist movement had formalized at Seneca Falls, New York, and especially in the North, other movements such as abolitionism both encouraged women to be social agents and demonstrated that their reappearance in the public domain endangered neither their health nor that of the nation. Moreover, the dynamic events of mid-century, including the War between the States (1861-65) challenged the gender boundaries and expectations that had confined women to the domestic sphere for more than three generations.
Challenge is the appropriate word here, for middle- and upper-class urban women both found and made opportunities in public society during and after the Civil War that drew from their long-defined practices in their domestic sphere. Nursing and teaching were precisely such activities, but they were also ones that required additional training as well as sound constitutions. Not surprisingly, then, some women demanded and received access to colleges, where they did as their brothers did: they began to participate in some of the emerging modern sports whose social power was increasing in the aftermath of the Civil War and the technological and communication changes of the 1860s and 1870s. At private colleges such as Vassar in New York and Smith and Wellesley in Massachusetts, women students formed clubs to play baseball and, quickly, tennis, croquet, and archery. College administrators and faculty responded, initially to the influx of women and their own fears about the negative impact of intellectual work on women students, with requirements for medical examinations, exercise and gymnastics regimens, and the gradual absorption of women's sport clubs.
Outside of the colleges, post-war middle- and upper-class women were also moving to take advantage of the increasing array of modern sports. Local gymnasiums, armories turned into playing areas, and a host of clubs that formed as men and women sought new forms of community provided urban and townswomen with opportunities for a range of sports, from skating and rowing to trap shooting and tennis. Such activities continued to stretch the bounds of activity acceptable for and to women. They also quieted some of the fears held especially by the male-dominated medical profession about the negative effects that physical movement in sports might have on women's biology and reproductive functions.
An even more significant challenge to the nearly century-old ideology that placed women in the home and in subservience to men came in the form of a machine, the bicycle. Invented in Europe in the early 19th century, early versions of the bicycle had appeared in various forms and had become the object of short-lived fads through the 1860s. Then came the invention of the "ordinary" (one large and one small wheel) and, subsequently, the "safety" cycle, and the latter especially appealed to women. Bicycle riding, and even some racing, became popular, and the practice afforded women with a means of physical mobility and freedom that they had not known for generations, since the days when horse ownership was common and expected, even by women. Significantly, as well, the bicycle catalyzed dress reform. Bloomers and knickerbockers went on, and corsets came off. The day of the "new woman" was about to dawn [13, www.womenssportsfoundation.org ].
2.4.4. The age of modern sports
Historians have labeled the period from the 1890s to World War I as the Progressive era, largely because "progress" was the goal of contemporaries, especially members of the urban middle class. Achievement did not always match rhetoric, but many women did see their positions and the quality of their lives enhanced. Some urban working women, for instance, earned more pay and improved conditions, and perhaps not surprisingly, some of the industries that employed women organized, first, calisthenics or physical culture classes and then team sports to promote personal health and worker efficiency. Such programs became more widespread after the turn of the century and by the 1920s individual companies and regional industries had multiple teams in sports such as basketball, bowling, tennis, baseball, volleyball, and eventually softball. Among the results were good advertising for the companies and competitive opportunities and even, on occasion, additional income for the athletes.
Another group of women whose lives came to incorporate opportunities for competitive sports were the upper-class women. In the 1870s and 1880s such women had joined clubs, social clubs, country clubs, and then sport-specific clubs, just as had their brothers and husbands. They also engaged in sports in colleges and, importantly, on their vacations or extended stays in Europe. By 1900 seven of these women competed in their first Olympics, in Paris, and despite the enduring opposition of the prime mover behind the modern Olympic Games, Baron Pierre de Coubertin, women consistently competed in the Games thereafter, albeit in small numbers and in socially acceptable sports such as tennis, archery, and even figure skating by 1924.
The Progressive era history of middle-class women's sporting experiences is more complicated. Especially before the turn of the century, they did experience considerable latitude in forming sport clubs and organizing competitions and appeared to gain a degree of physical and personal freedom to sport similar to that enjoyed by their working and upper-class sisters. Indeed, they initially popularized the newly created sports of basketball and volleyball, and it was the rapid spread of such sports, as well as field hockey, cycling, and tennis, that encouraged their teachers and recreation supervisors to form associations and write rules. In men's experiences, it was precisely such associations that were critical to the promotion and expansion of modern sports.
However, many of the women who came to control sports for girls and adults, especially in institutions such as schools and colleges, had accepted the warnings of the medical profession that unfettered athletic competition would harm female participants, physically and psychologically, and detract from or even diminish their femininity. Consequently, in the 1890s, women physical educators began to limit sport contests, initially by changing the rules of some games, such as basketball, and eventually by altering the very nature of contests. By 1920 school and college sports were often played not in contests between teams representing their institutions, but in play days or sport days, in which the convened teams were broken up and the players assigned to mixed school teams.
By the 1920s the conservative approach of women physical educators was quite distinct from, indeed, out of sync with, the attitudes and expectations of many other people. The United States was experiencing its first mature burst of popular consumerism, which was buoyed by a fun ethic and a relatively expansive economy. Clubs and teams for women proliferated, in part as more institutions, from urban governments to churches to saloons, sponsored teams or provided facilities. Improvements and declining prices of sporting goods, as well as the increasing popularity of sports spectating and sports as entertainment also spurred the organization of leagues, both amateur and semi-pro. Beyond the pale of physical educators, the latter provided underground opportunities for middle-class athletes.
After 1929 the Great Depression disrupted this sporting boom, but it did not end it entirely. In fact, the popularity of industrial sport likely peaked in the 1930s, and sports such as softball and bowling became extremely popular among women. Women's Olympic competition also gained more popular support, in part because of great performances by athletes such as Mildred "Babe" Didrikson and in part because support continued to diminish for the mythology of the negative physical and biological consequences of athletics for women. Significantly as well, women continued to enter nontraditional roles, a trend that became more pronounced as World War II began. After 1941 more and more women took jobs that had once belonged to the men who went abroad to fight. Even professional baseball opened its doors to women via the АН-American Girls Baseball League financed by Philip Wrigley of chewing gum and Chicago Cubs fame.
The All-American Girls Baseball League began play in 1943 in mid-size cities in the Great Lakes region. The athletes were not, to be sure, the first professional women athletes in the United States. In the modern era that honor likely belongs to female distance walkers in the 1870s and 1880s and rodeo competitors in the twentieth century. Nor were they the only women professional athletes of the decade. After 1949 the Ladies Professional Golf Association organized, offering $15,000 in purse money spread over nine tournaments. Five years later, women golfers could earn $225,000 a year on the LPGA tour.
In the 1940s as well, an even more significant movement developed in African American colleges. Track and field teams were training at places such as Tuskegee Institute and Tennessee State, and these colleges would produce the athletes that would integrate U.S. women's Olympic teams and revolutionize the contests and the records. By the early 1960s African-American athletes such as Wilma Rudolph ran record-pace after record-pace, opening doors for other black women and paving the way for Jackie Joyner-Kersee and Florence Griffith Joyner, among numerous others. Other sports such as bowling and tennis also integrated in the post-World War II years [13, www.womenssportsfoundation.org ].
The success of women's tennis, however, did little to help the fortunes of women's professional team sports.
Women's professional team sports achieved popularity for the first time in the 1990s, particularly in basketball and football (soccer). This popularity has been asymmetric, being strongest in the U.S., certain European countries and former Communist states. Thus women's soccer is dominated by the U.S., China, and Norway, who have historically fielded weak men's national teams. Despite this increase in popularity, women's professional sports leagues continue to struggle financially. The WNBA is operated at a loss by the NBA, in the hopes of creating a market that will eventually be profitable. A similar approach is used to promote female boxing, as women fighters are often undercards on prominent male boxing events, in the hopes of attracting an audience.
Today, women participate competitively in virtually every major sport, though the level of participation decreases in contests of brute strength or "contact" sports. Few schools have women's programs in American football, boxing or wrestling. This practical recognition of gender differences in physiology has not impeded the development of a higher profile for female athletes in other historically male sports, such as golf, marathoning, and ice hockey [17, www.usa.usembassy.de/sports_women.htm]
To sum up all the given information, it should be said that the Americans even can be called partisans of a number of colourful sports that are unlike those in other countries. The most popular sports are American football, baseball, basketball, bowling and etc. Most games are shown on television, and the camerawork is so skilful that the thrilling events can be followed even if you know nothing about the game.A lot of people are keen on sports, both professional and amauter.Nowadays there are a lot of possibilities for different people to participate in sports: for healthy people and for disabled ones, for men and women, children and grown-ups. Every person can choose a definite kind of sport according to his taste. At present a great number of various clubs, centres and leagues are founded to help people with their choice.If to speak about women in sport, it should be said that women's sports include amateur and professional competitions in virtually all sports. Female participation in sports rose dramatically in the twentieth century, especially in the latter part, reflecting changes in modern societies that emphasized gender parity. Although the level of participation and performance still varies greatly by country and by sport, women's sports have broad acceptance throughout the world, and in a few instances, such as tennis and figure skating, rival or exceed their male counterparts in popularity.There are also several organizations in the USA which give a possibility for disabled people to look at their lives in another way or show them that their lives are not over yet.
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