Rarely Have We Asked Why: Reflections on Canadian Women's Experience in Sport1
Rarely Have We Asked Why: Reflections on Canadian Women's Experience in Sport1 M. ANN HALL University of Alberta It has taken a long time but there is a growing interest sport. They have, she continues, become adult play among feminists in sport. On a practical level we see the which imitate the realities of work and become a sub• exciting growth of alternative structures and programs stitute for living.2 No one denies that the very essence of designed specifically by and for women such as the sport and games is the sense of make-believe, spontanei• Women's Sports Foundation in the USA, women's run• ty and freedom. In fact, one Canadian sportswriter has ning clubs, wilderness groups offering outdoor ex• disparagingly labelled sports "the play-pen world" and periences exclusively for women, specialized magazines the "toy universe." Despite its childish image, sport is in• like Women's Sports and Fighting Women, and the credibly pervasive, touching the existence of all in• feminist health movement which is finally beginning to dividuals, male and female, at some point during their take an active interest in physical fitness. lives. Some grow to hate all forms of physical activity, others despise the crass commercialization of profes• Feminist literature, on the other hand, is virtually sional sport, but many find pleasure in maintaining a devoid of discussions about sport. This should not be life-long fitness through some form of physical recrea• surprising since no matter what the intellectual tradition, tion. Feminists, however, even if they believe in its im• it has been fashionable to consider sport so trivial and in• portance to one's general well-being, have not taken up significant that to waste time and words studying it was the cause of sport and have, for the most part, dismissed perceived as a senseless pursuit.
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