From Women in Sport to Cultural Critique: A Review of Books About Women in Sport

and Physical Culture

Author(s): Susan J. Bandy
Source: Women's Studies Quarterly , Spring - Summer, 2005, Vol. 33, No. 1/2, Women
and Sports (Spring - Summer, 2005), pp. 246-261
Published by: The Feminist Press at the City University of New York

Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/40005523

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 FROM WOMEN IN SPORT TO CULTURAL CRITIQUE:
A REVIEW OF BOOKS ABOUT WOMEN IN SPORT AND
PHYSICAL CULTURE

SUSAN J. BANDY

INTRODUCTION

Scholarly interest in issues that pertain to women and sports developed

in Canada, England, and the United States at approximately the same
time and somewhat earlier than it did in other western countries.

Research began in the late 1960s within the context of second-wave

feminism and focused primarily on the female athlete. In the late 1970s,
the focus of research began to shift away from the female athlete
toward the concept of gender and a critique of sport and physical cul-
ture.1 More recently interest has shifted yet again, focusing not on gen-
der as a distinct category but as a dynamic, relational process. It has
become a perspective and an interpretation, a way of looking at issues
through the "lens" of gender. Such perspectives have led to investiga-
tions concerning gender relations and issues of a more transnational
nature. By reviewing some of the most influential books that have been
written in English, this essay traces the development of ideas in the dis-
course and gives an overview of the way in which these ideas have
transformed our views and extended our understandings of the female
athlete and the nature of sport as a cultural institution and cultural con-
struct. The essay will also examine the way in which these books have
influenced our views concerning identity and difference in sport that
transcend national boundaries and categories of race, class, and gender.
In so doing, this essay attempts to place these ideas in the context of the
development of both feminist theory and theories in sports studies.11

FEMINIST INTEREST IN SPORT AND PHYSICAL ACTIVITY

As sport historian Roberta Park has written, feminists of the eighteenth

and nineteenth centuries recognized that physical strength and the right
to exercise and be physically educated are feminist issues.111 In A Vindication

[ WSQ: Women's Studies Quarterly 2005, vol. 33, no. 1&2]

© 2005 by Susan J. Bandy. All rights reserved.

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 BANDY ■ 247

of the Rights of Woman, Mary Wollstonecraft wrote that she wished

persuade women to endeavor to acquire strength of both mind and bod
. . a character as a human being." Further, Wollstonecraft argued t
girls should be "allowed to take the exercises as boys" and then the qu
tion of the natural superiority of males could be answered. As Park (1
noted six decades later, Elizabeth Cady Stanton expressed the same view
when writing for The Lily, suggesting that when girls were given the sa
physical freedoms as boys in "romping, swimming, climbing, and play
ing," they would prove to be as physically capable as boys.
During Cady Stanton 's life, the first books pertaining to women a
physical activity were written, and these were devoted to the develop-
ment of calisthenics and gymnastics programs for women, whic
appeared in a number of countries in the nineteenth and early twenti
centuries. 1V In the United States, Catharine Beecher's book, Physiolog
and Calisthenics for Schools and Families, introduced an interest in the phy
cal activity and health of young women in 1856 as programs of physic
culture and gymnastics were being developed in the United States and
countries of Western Europe/
More than a century later, with the development of second-wa
feminism, Simone de Beauvoir recognized the importance of physi
activity as a feminist issue as her predecessors had done. In The Secot
Sex, De Beauvoir remarked that woman should "swim, climb mount
peaks, pilot an airplane, battle against the elements, take risks, go
for adventure, and she will not feel before the world . . . timidity/1 In
Beauvoir 's lifetime, the study of women and sport began in earnest i
the context of the rebirth of the women's movement and the women

sports movement in North America and Great Britain in the 1960s, a

increasing numbers of females entered competitive sports. At this time,
physical educators began to show interest in the influence of sport on
women, and they saw the need to analyze the social dimensions of
women's participation in sport.

EARLIEST RESEARCH CONCERNING WOMEN AND SPORT

In 1965, when the discipline of physical education was becoming more

academic and theoretically oriented in the United States, the work of
Eleanor Metheny opened the way for a more scholarly approach to the
study of women and sport. Long before the symbolic and the representa-
tional entered the literature concerning sport, Metheny, influenced by

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248 ■ FROM WOMEN IN SPORT TO CULTURAL CRITIQUE

the work of Suzanne K. Langer and her ideas about symbols, argued in
her essay, "The Feminine Image in Sports," that sport was a symbolic
creation and that "mythic images of the female role" created notions of
appropriate sporting activities for females, foreshadowing the feminist
critique of sport that was to come/11
In addition to Metheny's enlightened views concerning sex-appro-
priate activities, the work of Dorothy V. Harris, which first appeared in
1971 and focused on psychological issues, formed the basis for subse-
quent research concerning the female athlete, personality traits, moti-
vations, societal perceptions, stereotypes, and acceptance of female ath-
letes/111 Following Harris, and influenced by sex-role research that was
being done by Sandra L. Bern and others, researchers began to study
role-conflict, the female apologetic, and later the notion of psychologi-
cal androgyny.lxThe concept of psychological androgyny was used to
overcome the deficiencies of sex roles as a model for analysis and
became a transitional concept that eventually moved the focus of
research from not only sex but gender as well.
The perspective of Metheny and Harris, whose work was largely
philosophic and psychological in nature, was enlarged with the 1974
publication of The American Woman and Sport, the first American text-
book devoted to women and sport. x Written by four scholars - Ellen
Gerber, Jan Felshin, Pearl Berlin, and Waneen Wyrick - the book was
the first comprehensive, multidisciplinary analysis of the problems, pat-
terns, and processes associated with the involvement of women in sport.
It also provided the first historical, sociological, psychological, and bio-
physical analyses of women in sport, which later became the subject of
books pertaining to each of these subdisciplines.xl Even more impressive
is that these scholars offered the first feminist perspectives concerning
sport, examining the social construction of woman and femininity and
the symbolic aspect of sport some years before socially constructed
notions of woman and sport entered the discourse in sports studies.

SPORT FEMINISM AND THE TRANSITION FROM "SEX" TO "GENDER"

With the publication of Carole Oglesby's collection of essays, Women

and Sport: From Myth to Reality, and M. Ann Hall's monograph, Sport and
Gender: A Feminist Perspective on the Sociology of Sport in 1978, an interest in
the concept of gender appeared in the literature and began to destabilize
concepts of sex and sex roles as these pertain to sport. This destabiliza-

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 BANDY ■ 249

tion was based on and nurtured by feminist theories that were develop-
ing in newly created departments of women's studies in the late 1970
and early 80s in the United States. Mary A. Boutilier and Lucinda Sa
Giovanni's The Sporting Woman (1983) offered new insights concerning
feminist theory, in addition to continuing the historical, psychological,
and sociological research of Gerber and her coauthors. Informed by the
works of Shulamith Firestone's The Dialectic of Sex (1970), Robin Mor
gan's Going Too Far (1977), and Mary Daly's Gyn/Ecology (1978), Boutili-
er and San Giovanni offered the first analysis of alternative feminis
frameworks - liberal feminism, Marxist feminism, radical feminism
and socialist feminism - and explored their relevance for sport. xl1 Not-
ing the patriarchal character of sport and the sexist ideology that per-
vades sport and sociological research concerning sport, the authors also
provided one of the first analyses of the influence of the mass media on
sport. xm Their analysis of the mass media and its representation of femal
athletes was framed in the following ways: the extent of coverage that
noted the lack of representation of women's sports on television an
newspapers and magazines; the type of coverage that receives the
majority of attention; the style of coverage or the nature or way in
which female athletes are represented visually and linguistically; an
the exclusion of women from the production of media concerning
women in sport. Boutilier and San Giovanni's analysis became the struc-
ture for subsequent analyses. X1V
It can be argued that research concerning the sexist nature of sport
and the view of sport as a patriarchal and socially constructed institutio
opened the way for further critique of women's exclusion from spor
and ideas pertaining to women's roles, cultural ideals of femininity, and
cultural views of women's bodies, all of which had prevented wome
from entering sports. Following the work of Catherine MacKinnon,
Adrienne Rich, and others, Helen Lenskyj (1986) was one of the firs
scholars to write about the relationship between female sexuality an
sport. xv Arguing that male control of female sexuality (in medicine, sc
ence, and religion) has been the ideological basis on which women hav
been excluded from sport, she maintains that the "political institution"
of compulsory heterosexuality - a form of male control - is of particu-
lar relevance to the study of women and sports. Lenskyj was also among
the first to draw attention to the relationships among ideology, female
sexuality, and sporting participation by linking the anatomical, physio-

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250 ■ FROM WOMEN IN SPORT TO CULTURAL CRITIQUE

logical, social, and expressive dimensions of female sexuality with

sports participation.™ Focusing more on the role of physicians and med-
ical discourse of the nineteenth century, Patricia A. Vertinsky's The Eter-
nally Wounded Woman: Women, Doctors, and Exercise in the Late Nineteenth
Century (1989) further advanced insights about the construction of
female frailty that underlay the rationale that was used to exclude
women from modern sport and revealed the power of discourse on the
formation of societal views of women. According to Vertinsky:

Not infrequently, medically defined notions of optimal female

health, individual and social wellbeing have justified the practice
of viewing female physiological functions as requiring pre-
scribed and/or delimited levels of physical activity and restricted
sporting opportunities. The origins of such views and the tenaci-
ty with which they have been maintained rest on long-standing,
invidious ideological assumptions about the nature of women
and the assumed entitlement to medical management of the
female body among the medical establishment.™1

FROM "WOMEN AND SPORT" TO CULTURAL CRITIQUE

In the early 1990s, a new perspective began to emerge in the literature

through the merger of Marxist, feminist, and cultural studies perspec-
tives and theories. Scholars began to critique sport (especially elite,
competitive sports) as an ideological tool that produced and reproduced
the domination of men over women. With this approach, advanced by
Susan Birrell, Cheryl Cole, Ann Hall, Jennifer Hargreaves, and others,
the focus of the research began to shift away from gender as a category
and toward gender as a perspective, interpretation, or lens through
which sport could be analyzed. The outcome was that researchers began
to examine topics concerning gender relations. In addition, scholars
combined the subdisciplines of both sport history and sport sociology as
they continued to critique sport as a cultural institution and cultural
construct.

Of paramount importance to feminist scholarship in gene

feminist scholarship pertaining to sport in particular has been t
mulation of notions of power and its effect on the discourse abo
body derived from the work of Michel Foucault. Rather than en
ing power as hierarchically ordered and possessed by persons, th

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 BANDY ■ 251

cauldian notion of power is seen as enmeshed networks variously assert-

ed through modern institutions and manifested most concretely at the
level of the body. Foucault's views affected feminist research concern-
ing sport in two significant ways. First, they enabled a broader critique
of sport as both a cultural institution and as a cultural construct, moving
the discourse away from materialist interpretations and toward sport as
a cultural construct of specific historical circumstances. Second, Fou-
cault's ideas about the body were especially pertinent to feminist schol-
arship in sport and stimulated an interest in the body in sports studies as
they did in other academic disciplines. For feminist scholars interested
in sport, the gendered and sexualized body and the way in which bodies
are constructed in sport through discourse began to develop. Following
the earlier work and perspectives of Boutilier and San Giovanni, schol-
ars have continued to study female athletes and their bodies and their
representation in both print and electronic media.
Feminist research concerning sex roles, the social construction of
femininity, and the patriarchal and sexist character of modern sport also
influenced the research of male scholars who began to examine the ide-
ology of male dominance and masculinity in sports and the view that
modern sport was formed as a consequence of a nineteenth-century cri-
sis of masculinity. Such research found its first expression in Donald
Sabo and Ross RunfoWs Jock: Sports and Male Identity (1980). This pio-
neering text was followed by several others, among the more influential
of which is Michael Messner and Donald Sabo's Sport, Men, and the Gen-
der Order: Critical Feminist Perspectives (1990). xvm The text, as a whole,
addresses the history and the nature of the relationship among sports,
men, and the gender order. Several essays explore the way in which
sport has been used in the construction of masculinity and view sport as
oppressive of women and repressive of men. Influenced by the work of
Robert W. Connell,xlx other essays offer the first critiques of hegemonic
masculinity in sport and include discussions of the marginalization of
women of color and gay men in sports, as well as one of the first essays
exploring homophobia in sport. xx
In the 1990s, four important books revealed the growing body of lit-
erature concerning women, sport, and culture and gender and sexuality
in twentieth-century women's sport and now serve to show the transi-
tions that occurred in the discourse in the 1990s. The interdisciplinary
perspectives of D. Margaret Costa and Sharon R. Guthrie's Women and

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252 ■ FROM WOMEN IN SPORT TO CULTURAL CRITIQUE

Sport: Interdisciplinary Perspectives provide an overview of the extensive

research that had been done in most of the subdisciplines of sport studies
during thirty years. XX1 The inclusion of a growing body of biomedical
research and its relevance for feminist scholarship are noteworthy.
Susan Birrell and Cheryl L. Cole's Women, Sport, and Culture (1994)
includes essays pertaining to ideology, the organization of sports, the
concept of sports as a male preserve, the influence of the media on
sports, and the politics of sexuality. The intent of the book is to bring
"feminist-informed sports studies" together with a "feminist cultural
studies perspective" based on more recent feminist theory that "prob-
lematizes the very categories at the structural base of 'women,' 'exclu-
sion,' and 'control'" and further "interrogates and analyzes the produc-
tion of sex/gender systems, identity effects, and bodies through prac-
tices associated with sport. "xxn One important aspect of this collection is
the inclusion of issues of sexuality that pertain to homophobia and the
construction and naturalization of sexual differ ence.xxm

Discussions of sexuality also appear in Susan K. Cahn's Coming on

Strong: Gender and Sexuality in Twentieth Century Women s Sport (1994). XX1V
Cahn's work offers a history of the participation of women in sports in
the twentieth century in the United States through the lens of gender,
arguing that competitive female athletes contest the constraints of their
gender. Cahn's work extends beyond a critique of sport in the United
States to the culture at large. She suggests that powerful female athletes,
throughout American history, have created a "gender disorder" and
have challenged the roots of male dominance in American culture,
which rest on the seemingly natural physical superiority of men. She
argues persuasively that:

The presence of powerful women athletes struck at the roots of

male dominance in American society - the seemingly natural
physical superiority of men. When women "surrendered their
sex" to take up masculine sport, might they also be assuming the
prerogatives and power of males, threatening what one sports-
writer wistfully referred to as "the old male supremacy?"xxv

It is also significant that Cahn addresses directly (perhaps for the first
time) the question of the De Beauvoirian "other" in women's sport:
black women and lesbians. She also clarifies the notion of sport as con-

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 BANDY ■ 253

tested terrain and notes, as few - if any - feminist scholars had do

that sport, in addition to being a site of female oppression, is a sit
female liberation.

Jennifer Hargreavess' Sporting Females: Critical Issues in the History

Sociology of Women's Sports (1994) gives an historical account of the de
opment of female sports from the formative years in the nineteenth c
tury to the present. It focuses more on sports in Great Britain and pr
vides an overview, both sociological and feminist, of the various theor
ical approaches to the study of sport, extending the first analysis
Boutilier and San Giovanni to include ethnographic research, figu
tional sociology, Marxist and Neo-Marxist approaches, structural
Marxism and theories of reproduction, cultural Marxism, and hegemon
theory. Applying Foucauldian notions of power, Hargreaves sugge
that "the problem of male power is fundamental, but also that sports
not produce a straightforward system of domination of men over wom
in sports."xxvlTo substantiate this view, she investigates the various e
nomic, practical, and structural constraints that prevent women f
participation in sports. And further, she explores the institutionalizat
of power and the way in which it affects both elite and amateur fema
athletes, giving an unprecedented critique of the effects of the intern
tionalization of elite sport for women in the International Olym
Movement. The uniqueness of Hargreaves 's methodology should
noted here. Her methodological approach is varied; it is a combination
archival research, media material, data analyses, and a variety of inves
tigative techniques (including interviews, which were not common
the time) in order to connect empirical material with theoretical ideas
In Feminism and Sporting Bodies: Essays on Theory and Practice (199
Canadian sport sociologist M. Ann Hall argues from a Foucauldian v
of power and suggests that feminist writings about sport should inclu
a union of feminist theory and praxis. To do so, Hall suggests that a fem
inist cultural studies approach is necessary, an approach that wo
emphasize: "the importance of more historically grounded studies
sensitivity to difference, especially among women; the relationshi
feminist theory to the study of men, sport, and masculinity; the signif
cance of the body; and feminist cultural politics and sport. "xxvn Hall w
one of the first scholars in sports studies to introduce the theorie
Judith Lorberxxvm and Judith Butlerxxlx into the discourse, and, in so doi
she brought the female athlete's body into the research. xxx

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254 ■ FROM WOMEN IN SPORT TO CULTURAL CRITIQUE

TRANSNATIONAL PERSPECTIVES AND THIRD-WAVE FEMINISM

Feminist research concerning sports was later advanced by the question

of the "other," introduced by De Beauvoir in The Second Sex in 1949 (and
advanced in contemporary feminist theory by Lorber, Butler, and oth-
ers). The ideas of difference and identity that emerged from a consider-
ation of the "other" have been critical to feminist discourse for some

time. In feminist scholarship in sport studies, a focus on the "other" has

led to questions about difference and identity, and scholarship of a more
international and transnational nature has surfaced in the last five years.
In Jennifer Hargreavess' Heroines of Sport: The Politics of Difference and Iden-
tity (2000), one finds a more explicit feminist perspective of a transna-
tional sort and a movement away from the center to consider the sport-
ing experiences of the "other" - groups of women who have been
excluded from or are on the margins of mainstream sport theory and
practice. Hargreaves suggests a redefinition of the heroic through an
"analysis of the struggles and achievements of specific groups of women
whose stories have been excluded from previous accounts of women's
sports and female heroism . . . struggles in sport that are social as well as
personal, linked to specific cultural, economic, political and religious
contexts and to global processes. "XXX1 Again using Foucauldian notions of
power and the concept of agency, Hargreaves explores the relations of
power between dominant and subordinate groups, focusing on the expe-
riences of Aboriginal, Muslim, lesbian, and disabled women from dif-
ferent countries throughout the world. In attempting to break with the
history of cultural imperialism, Eurocentric discourses, and the univer-
salized accounts of "women in sport," she examines the relationship
between women's participation in sport and their sense of identity and
raises questions about inclusion and exclusion, power and privilege, and
the relationship between the local and the global. As was the case with
her earlier book, Hargreaves approaches her research in a variety of
ways, including interviews with women in many parts of the world,
maintaining that the life history method gives voice to the marginalized
women and better enables the researcher to understand their needs,
desires, opportunities, and constraints.
One could argue that although the study of women and sport and of
gender and sport appeared earlier in North America and Great Britain
than in other western countries, an interest in studying the female ath-
lete and issues related to gender have appeared in many different coun-

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 BANDY ■ 255

tries. xxxu Perhaps as a result of increased interest in the subject by wome

of other countries, there appears to have been yet another shift in the
focus of research concerning gender and sport with the turn of the mil
lennium. Transnational issues and matters of identify and difference
coupled with the influence of postmodernism, seems to have affecte
research methodologies. A multifaceted approach to research, using a
admixture of methods such as textual analysis, group interviews, con
tent analysis, critical theory, and gender theory has recently been used
in the research. XXXI11Personal narratives, ethnography, biography, and
matters of individual experience in sport have also recently become sub-
jects of investigation. XXX1V
In retrospect, it seems that the work of sports feminists in Canada,
England, and the United States has been significantly influenced by
American feminist scholarship, and to a lesser extent by the writings of
French feminists. xxxv Although Wollstonecraft, Cady Stanton, and De
Beauvoir viewed the female body as central to feminism and considered
physical strength and exercise to be feminist issues, it seems that femi-
nist scholars of second-wave feminism have generally not taken a signif-
icant interest in these issues as Ann Hall main tains. XXXV1 Recent books,
however, suggest that there is a recognition that sport, exercise, and the
female sporting body may, in fact, be of interest to a larger community
of feminist scholars. In the chapter entitled "Believing Is Seeing: Biolo-
gy as Ideology," Judith Lorber argues, in her influential book Paradoxes of
Gender that "Sports illustrate the ways bodies are gendered by socia
practices and how the female body is socially constructed to be inferi-
or. "xxxvn In spite of Lorber 's recognition of the role of sports in the con
struction of women's inferiority, she, as is the case with many feminist
scholars, fails to recognize the liberating potential of sport for females.
More recently, however, this potential has been acknowledged, as
Colette Dowling notes the increasing "normalcy" of women's sportin
bodies and the relationship between such bodies and the sporting expe-
rience and women's liberation in The Frailty Myth: Women Approaching
Physical Equality . In Built to Win: The Female Athlete as Cultural Icon, Lesli
Hey wood and Sheri L. Dworkin recognize the importance of these rela-
tionships even more in their argument that sport is the "stealth feminism
of third-wave feminism," and suggest that "Athleticism can be an
activist tool for third wave feminists and can have important social con-
sequences."""111

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256 ■ FROM WOMEN IN SPORT TO CULTURAL CRITIQUE

SUSAN J. BANDY is currently a visiting professor in the Department of

Sport Science at the University of Aarhus in Denmark. Her research
interests include gender, body, physical culture and women's sports lit-
erature. She is the co-author of Crossing Boundaries, an international
anthology of women's experiences in sport.

NOTES

A version of this paper that is more focused on Europe has been pub-
lished in Dansk Sociologie 2(15), July 2004.
i It is important to note that often women have been excluded from activities that
have been traditionally regarded as "sport." For this reason, the term physical
culture is included in this research because it broadens the scope of the paper to
include activities not traditionally associated with sport, such as dance and exer-
cise.

ii For a more detailed analysis of the history of the study of gender and sports see
Birell (1988) and Hall (1988).
iii It is also interesting to note that Jane Adams (1919) argued for the importance of
play and recreation of young girls in modern cities.
iv In Denmark, Germany, Hungary, and Sweden, for example, there was also an
interest in callisthenics and gymnastics, and books and essays were written about
the subject in each of these countries.
v Beecher 's first book was followed by Physiology and Calisthenics for Schools and Fam-
ilies. New York: Harper and Brothers, in 1856.
vi As cited in Ellen Gerber et al. (1974, xii)
vii See Langer's books, Feeling and Form: A Theory of Art, Philosophy in a New Key, and
Problems in Art. Also see Metheny's essay "Symbolic Forms of Movement: The
Feminine Image in Sports," in her 1965 book, Connotations of Movement in Sport and
Dance: A Collection of Speeches about Sport and Dance as Significant Forms of Human
Behavior (Dubuque, IA: W.C. Brown Co.).
viii In 1971, Harris presented a paper entitled "The Social Self and Competitive Self
of the Female Athlete" at a symposium on the Sociology of Sport at the Univer-
sity of Waterloo, in Ontario, Canada. This may have been the first presentation
concerning these ideas. In 1972, she published an essay on the topic, "Female
Aggression and Sport Involvement," in Proceedings of the Fourth Canadian Sympo-
sium on Psycho-Motor Learning and Sports Psychology, Waterloo, Ontario, Canada,
422-6.

ix The Bern Sex Role Inventory (BMRI) that measures individual differences in
gender-role orientation provided the major impetus for the research that was
done concerning the female athlete at this time.
x The following books, which include writings about the historical, sociological,
and physiological issues, were published after the work of Gerber et al.:
Stephanie L. Twin, ed. Out of the Bleachers: Writings on Women and Sport (Old
Westbury, NY: The Feminist Press, 1979) and Reet Howell, ed. Her Story in

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 BANDY ■ 257

Sport: A Historical Anthology of Women in Sports (West Point, NY: Leisure Press
1982).
xi One of the first books devoted to the history of women and sport was Uriel
Simri, A Concise World History of Women's Sports (Netanya, Israel: Wingate Insti-
tute for Physical Education and Sport, 1983). It was followed by Allen Guttman
Women's Sports: A History (New York: Columbia University Press, 1991) and
Marian K. Steel, Half the Race: A History of Australian Women in Sport (London:
HarperCollins Publishers, Ltd., 1991). Mary Jo Festle's Playing Nice: Apologies in
Women's Sports (New York: Columbia University Press, 1996) provides a more
recent history of American women in sport from the 1950s into the 1990s. The
first books devoted exclusively to sociological issues include M. Ann Hall's Sport
and Gender: A Feminist Perspective on the Sociology of Sport (Ottawa: Canadian Asso-
ciation of Health, Physical Education and Recreation, 1978) and Jennifer Harg-
reaves, ed. Sport, Culture, and Ideology (Boston: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1982).
The books first devoted exclusively to physiological issues include Christine L.
Wells. Women, Sport and Performance (Champaign, IL: Human Kinetics Publishers,
1985) and Barbara L. Drinkwater, ed. Female Endurance Athletes (Champaign, IL:
Human Kinetics Publishers, 1986).
xii Boutilier and San Giovanni were following the work of A. M. Jaggar and P.R.
Struhl, eds. Feminist Frameworks: Alternative and Theoretical Accounts of the Relations
between Women and Men (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1978).
xiii One of the earliest investigations concerning the subject was Y.B. Slatton, "The
Role of Women in Sport as Depicted Through Advertising in Selected Maga-
zines, 1900-1968" (Ph.D. dissertation, University of Iowa, 1970).
xiv Refer to the following works concerning women, sport, and the media: Martha
C. Duncan, Michael A. Messner, Linda Williams, and Kerry Jensen, Gender
Stereotyping in Televised Sports (Los Angeles: Amateur Athletic Foundation of Los
Angeles, 1990); Martha C. Duncan and Michael A. Messner, Gender Stereotyping in
Televised Sports: A Follow-up to the 1989 Study (Los Angeles: The Amateur Athlet-
ic Foundation of Los Angeles, 1994); and Pamela, J. Creedon, ed., Women, Media
and Sport: Challenging Gender Values (London: Sage Publications, 1994), which was
the first book devoted exclusively to women, sport, and the media.
xv In 1981, M. Ann Hall published Sport, Sex Roles, and Sex Identity (Ottawa: Canadi-
an Research Institute for the Advancement of Women), which was perhaps the
first text to address issues of sexual identity in the discourse on sport. Lenskyj has
continued her work with sport and sexuality in her recent book Out on the Field:
Gender, Sport, and Sexualities (Toronto: Women's Press, 2003).
xvi The essays in J.A. Mangan and Roberta J. Park's From 'Fair Sex' to Feminism: Sport
and the Socialization of Women in the Industrial and Post-Industrial Eras (London: Frank
Cass and Company Ltd., 1987) added to the literature concerning the social con-
struction of femininity and its relation to the exclusion of women from sport. In
addition, the book offers the first comparative and transatlantic perspectives
concerning women in sports, with essays devoted to Great Britain, the Com-
monwealth, and American perspectives.

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258 ■ FROM WOMEN IN SPORT TO CULTURAL CRITIQUE

xvii Patricia A. Vertinsky, The Eternally Wounded Woman: Women, Doctors, and Exer-
cise in the Late Nineteenth Century (Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1994, 1).
xviii In the early 1990s, the following books also addressed issues of masculinity and
sport: Brian Pronger, The Arena of Masculinity: Sports, Homosexuality, and the Mean-
ing of Sex (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1990); Hans Bonde, Mandighed og Sport
(Odense: Universitetsforlag, 1991); Michael A. Messner, Power at Play: Sports and
the Problem of Masculinity (Boston: Beacon Press, 1992); and Michael A. Messner
and Donald F.Sabo, Sex, Violence and Power in Sports: Rethinking Masculinity (Free-
dom, CA: Crossing Press, 1994).
xix See R.W. Connell, Gender and Power: Society, the Person, and Sexual Politics (Stan-
ford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1987).
xx More recently, Jim McKay et al., ed., Masculinities, Gender Relations, and Sport
(Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, 2000), offer perspectives of scholars
from Australia, Canada, England, and the United States.
xxi Greta L. Cohen's edited collection of essays, Women in Sport: Issues and Controver-
sies (London: Sage Publications, 1993), also includes sociological, historical,
physiological, psychological, and economic perspectives.
xxii Susan Birrell and Cheryl Cole, ed., Women, Sport, and Culture (Champaign, IL:
Human Kinetics, 1994, xvii).
xxiii After Birrell and Cole's work introduced homophobia, Pat Griffin published
Strong Women, Deep Closets: Lesbians and Homophobia in Sport (Champaign, IL:
Human Kinetics, 1998).
xxiv The work of Cahn and others concerning sexuality has been continued in
Sheila Scraton and Anne Flintoff, ed., Gender, Sport and Sexuality (London: Rout-
ledge, 2002).
xxv Susan K. Cahn, Coming on Strong: Gender and Sexuality in Twentieth- Century
Women's Sport (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1994, 207-8).
xxvi Jennifer Hargreaves, Sporting Females: Critical Issues in the History and Sociology of
Women's Sports (London: Routledge, 1994, 1-2).
xxvii M. Ann Hall, Feminism and Sporting Bodies: Essays on Theory and Practice (Cham-
paign, IL: Human Kinetics, 1996, 37).
xxviii See Judith Lorber and Susan A. Farrell, ed., The Social Construction of Gender
(Newbury Park, CA: Sage Publications, 1991), and Judith Lorber, Paradoxes of
Gender (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1994).
xxix See Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity ( London: Routledge,
1990) and Bodies That Matter: On the Discursive Limits of "Sex" (London: Rout-
ledge, 1993).
xxx In 1992, Sabine Kroner and Gertrud Pfister edited Frauen-Rdume, Korper und
Identitdt im Sport - Women-Spaces, Bodies and Identity in Sport (Pfaffenweiler: Cen-
taurus-Verlagsgesellschaft, 1992). A year after Hall's book was published, the
following books pertaining to the female sporting body were published: Jennifer
Hargreaves, Muscles, Metaphors and Myths: Examining Women's Sporting Bodies
(London: Roehampton Institute, 1997); Leslie Heywood, Bodymakers: A Cultural
Anatomy of Women's Body Building (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University

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 BANDY ■ 259

Press, 1997); and Fan Hong, Foothinding, Feminism and Freedom: The Liberation
Women's Bodies in Modern China (London: Frank Cass,1997). More recently, Gi
ola Gori has examined the interrelation between the female sporting body an
fascism in Female Bodies, Sport, and Italian Fascism: Submissive Women and Stron
Mothers (London: Frank Cass Publishers, forthcoming).
xxxi Jennifer Hargreaves, Heroines of Sport: The Politics of Difference and Identity (
don: Routledge, 2000, 1-2).
xxxii See the following: Argentina: Li Liana Morelli, Mujeres Deportistas [Fem
Athletes] (Buenos Aires: El Planeta, 1990). Australia: John Daly, Feminae Lude
[Female Players] (Adelaide: Openbook Publishers, 1994). Canada: Jean Cochr
et al. Women in Canadian Sports (Toronto: Fitzhenry and Whiteside, 1977);
Ann Hall and Dorothy Richardson, Fair Ball: Towards Sex Equality in Canad
Sport (Ottawa: The Canadian Advisory Council on the Status of Women, 19
Laura Robinson, She Shouts She Scores: Canadian Perspectives on Women and Sp
(Toronto: Thompson Educational Publishers, 1997); and Phillip White a
Kevin Young, ed., Sport and Gender in Canada (Oxford: Oxford University Pre
1999). China: Fan Hong, Footbinding, Feminism and Freedom: The Liberation
Women's Bodies in Modern China (London: Frank Cass, 1997), and Jinxia Dong
Women, Sport and Society in Modern China: Holding Up More Than Half the Sky (L
don: Frank Cass, 2003). Denmark: Inge Kryger Pedersen, Den excellente prcestatio
Elitesport, kvinder og Karriere [An Excellent Achievement: Elite Sport, Women,
Career] (Sociologisk Institut, Kobenhavns Universitet, 1998); Thing, Lone Frii
Sport - en emotional affdre. Kvinder, holdsport og aggression [Sport - An Emotional Aff
Women, Team Sport and Aggressions (Sociologisk Institut, Kobenhavns Universite
1999); and Alice Riis Bach, Kvinder pa banen: sport, h,0n og medier [Women on t
Track: Sport, Gender and Media] (Kobenhavn: Narayana Press, 2002). Fran
Franchise Laget et al., Le Grand Livre du Sport Feminin [The Grand Book of Wome
Sport] (Bellville-s-Saone: SIGEFA, 1982), and Pierre Arnaud and Theirry T
ret, Histoire du sport feminin [History of Women's Sport] (Paris: L'Harmattan, 199
Germany: Gertrud Pfister, Frau und Sport [Women and Sport] (Frankfurt/M.: Fi
cher, 1980); Marie-Luise Klein, Frauensport in der Tagespress [Female Athletes in
Mass Media] (Bochum: Studienverl Brockmeyer, 1986); Birgit Palzkill,
Entwicklung lesbischer Identitdt im Sport [Lesbian Identity in Sport] (Bielefe
Frauenoffensive, 1990); and Gertrud Pfister, Frauensport in der DDR [Women
Sport in the DDR] (Koln: StrauB, 2002). Hungary: R. Levelekine. Matild, ed
No es a Sport [Women and Sport] (Budapest: TTT, 1963). Italy: Giana M
Madella, Atleta alfemminile: la donna e lo sport: storia di un' emancipazione difficile [T
Female Athlete: Women and Sport: A Story of a Difficult Emancipation] (Como: Edit
va, 1979); Alessandro Salvinni, Identita Femminile e Sport [Feminine Identity in Sp
(Florence: La Nuova Italia, date of publication unknown); Angela Teja, E
cazione fisica al femminile [Physical Education of Women] (SSS Ed.: Roma 1995), a
Gigliola Gori, Female Bodies, Sport, Italian Fascism: Submissive Women and Str
Mothers (London: Frank Cass Publishers, forthcoming). Norway: Gerd Von
Lippe, ed. Kvinner og Idrett: Fra Myte til Realitet [Women and Sport: From Myth

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260 ■ FROM WOMEN IN SPORT TO CULTURAL CRITIQUE

Reality] (Oslo, Gyldendal Norsk Forlag, 1982). Spain: Mujer y Deporte [Women and
Sport] (Madrid: Ministerio de Cultura, 1986). United Kingdom: Kathleen E.
McCrone, Playing the Game: Sport and the Physical Emancipation of English Women,
1870-1941 (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1988).
xxxiii See Hey wood and Dworkin, Built to Win: The Female Athlete as Cultural Icon
(Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2003), which approaches the study
of the female athlete using a variety of methodologies.
xxxiv See Anne Bolin and Jane Granskog, ed. , Athletic Intruders: Ethnographic Research
on Women, Culture, and Exercise (Albany: State University of New York Press,
2003), the first work pertaining exclusively to ethnographic research.
xxxv It is interesting to note that, with the exception of the work of Michel Fou-
cault, the scholarship of French authors and feminists has not significantly
affected feminist sports scholars in these countries. Interestingly enough, Fou-
cault's work did not specifically address issues of gender or sport. I would fur-
ther argue that feminist scholarship would benefit greatly from the ideas of
Helene Cixous, Madeleine Gagnon, and Colette Guillaumin as well as scholars
from Central and Eastern Europe, especially as their work pertains to the body.
xxxvi See M. Ann Hall's discussion of these issues in Feminism and Sporting Bodies:
Essays on Theory and Practice (Champaign, IL: Human Kinetics Publishers, 1996,
49-68).
xxxvii Judith Lorber, Paradoxes of Gender (London: Yale University Press, 1994, 41-
4).
xxxviii Leslie Hey wood and Sheri L. Dworkin, Built to Win: The Female Athlete as
Cultural Icon (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2003, 25-54).

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