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. Elizabeth Janeway, for discriminatory sporting practices as being unimportant instance, suggests in Man's World, Woman's Place, that compared to the real issues underlying the sexist nature just as women's skills once necessary for feeding and of our society. clothing mankind have deteriorated into hobbies, so too have men's survival skills and prowess degenerated into At the same time, most sportswomen and those in- volved as professionals in physical education, the recrea• figure skating, for instance). Rarely was women's sport tion and leisure fields have shown little interest in evaluated as something worthwhile in its own right feminism and the women's movement in general. Beyond without the illegitimate and irrelevant comparisons to the apathy there is often antagonism, resentment and the qualitatively different sporting achievements of unfortunate misconceptions. males. Why is it so important to ask "why" and not just sim• When describing and discussing women's experience ply accept the sporting world as it is and get on with it? in sport, it is important to understand what is meant by Why not accept the fact that there are fewer status alter• sport. Sport sociologists and philosophers agonize over natives available to women athletes, hence far fewer the nature and precise meaning of sport, and are often rewards (both psychological and material) and con• more confusing than elucidating.3 In this discussion, I siderably less access to power and prestige? To do so is to use the term "sport" in the way I feel most people use it; accept a double standard for male and female athletes. that is, in its everyday sense. Quite simply, sport is a Why, for example, must a professional woman athlete spectrum of physical activities which range from the possess attractive features and a curvaceous body before more recreational, unorganized pursuits of uncommitted she can benefit from lucrative product endorsements? individuals through to competition at the highest levels, We do not ask the same of our male athletes because, requiring a high degree of intense commitment and ar• quite simply, they often become demi-god heroes regard• duous training. The problem with this everyday use of less of how handsome or ugly they may be. Why, for sport as a generic term, in other words as something all example, are there no women members of the In• encompassing and collective, is that a certain refinement ternational Olympic Committee? Why, for example, do is missing, and no distinction is made between the social girls and women in contrast to boys and men, participate reality of sport and the relationship of the individual to less frequently in fewer numbers in a limited range of this reality. For example, much of the reality of sport is sports and physical activities? Are boys more naturally irrelevant to women. With the exception of golf, tennis predisposed to physical activity? I would suggest not. But and figure skating, very few women athletes have the op• time and time again, we as sportswomen accept all this portunity to become professionals, earning their living on and never, never, ask why it should be. To question the the circuit. Much sport on television is irrelevant to sex structure of sport is to challenge the very nature of women—Canadian and American football, ice hockey, the sex structure of society. It is, therefore, vitally im• basketball, soccer, auto racing, boxing, etc. There is, portant to ask "why." therefore, both a subjective and an objective dimension to an individual's involvement in what we call sport with What I wish to argue in this paper is that Canadian its recreational-competitive continuum. Subjectively, women have naively and complacently accepted their and there is no difference here for males and females, in• second-class status in the sporting world. For much of dividuals define for themselves the relative primacy of the past one hundred years there was little we could do recreation and competition for any particular sport about it given the restrictive and reactionary attitudes situation, or indeed their approach to sport in general. towards female involvement in an androcentric and Objectively, there is an orderly hierarchy of competition patriarchal sports world. The sporting qualities and which is pyramidal in structure. Whereas men are free to achievements of the dominant sex tended to provide the occupy all levels of the hierarchy, women often have a absolute evaluative criteria against which women were difficult time climbing to the top rung and in many judged (except in those sports which possess obvious sports it is completely impossible. It has been this way aesthetic qualities where it often worked in reverse— since the beginning of organized sport for women. Let us briefly review the history of women's sport in other things, the National Council of Women took up the Canada over the past one hundred years. The backdrop cause of sport, declaring: "To the young, the strong, and will provide a basis for understanding why the sports the rich, the choice is wide and varied; but to the poor, world is so slow to change and why Canadian sports• the busy and the woman who is no longer young, the women themselves have been even slower in pushing for problem of athletics on ever so modest a scale is a dif• reform.4 ficult one."6 Particularly in Eastern Canada where ac• cess to the major urban centers was easier, women's The 1860s and 1870s saw the beginning of female par• sports clubs mushroomed and championships were in• ticipation in Canadian sport, albeit extremely limited stituted. As educational opportunities for young women and somewhat passive—fox hunting, tobogganing, ice expanded so did their interest in exercise and physical skating, roller skating, swimming and croquet were the culture. only acceptable activities simply because voluminous skirts and Victorian ideas kept women out of many The safety bicycle was seen as the great liberator and more. Except for riding habits and bathing suits, did more to increase women's participation in sport than women's sportswear was unheard of in this era, and so anything else in this era. As the Toronto Globe pointed the enthusiastic skater or tobogganist was often at a loss out, "one bicyclist wearing an advanced costume does for suitable and practical apparel. Croquet, proclaimed more towards furthering dress reform than a score of by Harper's Weekly as "the greatest outdoor game for theorists, writers and lecturers."7 Luckily most women women yet invented," presented little problem since the did not succumb to the ridiculous suggestions of perma• appeal of the game lay in its courting value which no nent physical damage and immorality, to say nothing of doubt was greatly enhanced by the occasional glimpse of the controversy surrounding the contentious bloomers; an ankle. rather it brought them to realize that more vigorous sports like tennis and racquets, basketball, ice hockey, The real beginning of women's sport in Canada oc• curling and golf were all within their capabilities. curred in the last two decades of the nineteenth century; everything that had gone on before was merely a prelude Throughout the early 1900s the so-called "modern" with its purpose not in exercise but innocent amusement. woman, no longer bound by Victorian ideas but still There was a revolution in women's fashions, the new hesitant to show her ankles, ventured into most forms of styles often the outcome of participation in vigorous ac• physical activity. The only sports which remained strictly tivity. The heyday of crinolines and corsets was fast forbidden were those where body contact was possible disappearing; and in their place came the bicycle skirt, and, if an invasion was imminent, the men made rules to the bloomer costume and the golf suit; ladies' sportswear prevent it. Women could compete so long as they did so had finally become necessary and fashionable.

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