Wherefore Art Thou Feminisms? Feminist Activism, Academic Feminisms, and Women’s Sports Advocacy

Academic Feminism and Women’s Sports Advocacy

Before 1980 there was no substantive discussion of women’s sports in mainstream feminist writings.¹ Women athletes were off the radar screens of Simone de Beauvoir, Susan Brownmiller, Kate Millett, Juliet Mitchell, Mary Daly, and Betty Friedan.² However, a feminist critique of sport as a major sexist institution did emerge in North America during the 1970s, spearheaded mainly by pioneering women physical educators.³ They indicted male-dominated sport for its gender inequalities, trivialization of women athletes, hoarding of administrative power and resources in men’s hands, and biologistic claims about men’s athletic superiority and women’s athletic inferiority.⁴

The radical vision of these early women’s sports scholars was fueled not only by their love for athletics but, perhaps more crucially, by their multiple forms of marginalization. As physical educators, they did not have as much scholarly legitimacy within the academy as women scholars from other disciplines. In addition, their involvement in sport and physical education was often perceived as a cultural marker of lesbian identity, opening the door to slander and discrimination.⁵ It was also true that, on most campuses, physical education and sport in general were marginalized by academics, whether feminist or nonfeminist, male or female. Many academics did not see athletics as an educational process or even as part of the educational institution where they worked. And especially for many feminist scholars, sport was dispensed with categorically because it epitomized male dominance and patriarchy.

Most academic feminists, whose numbers increased during the 1970s and 1980s, did not generally discover or incorporate the work of the early women sports scholars. It was not until the 1990s that the research and writing on women in sports started to seep into more interdisciplinary academic soil, extending its roots into psychology, history, exercise science, cultural studies, anthropology, and literature. And even today, in some women’s studies programs, sport is seen as separate from or peripheral to feminism and women’s movements.

On U.S. campuses, there was not much connection between academic feminists and women sports proponents, and the distancing went in both directions. Historically, the generation of Second Wave academic feminists had little or no personal athletic experience in their cultural backgrounds. They were part of the pre-Title IX generation of women, for whom shooting hoops, throwing elbows, and sweating buckets were as alien as boardroom banter. In addition, those women who were involved with sports during the 1970s and 1980s (e.g., as athletes, administrators, and coaches) often resisted being associated with any form of feminism. Nor did they line up to take women’s studies courses. To be labeled a “feminist” in the masculine and homophobic culture of sport could have drawn unfriendly fire from colleagues and those in power.⁶

Mainstream Feminist Activism and Women’s Sports Advocacy

Outside academia, feminist activists were also slow to discover and integrate the vision of women’s sports advocates. Two historical events illustrate how earlier mainstream feminist activists did not fully understand women’s sports activism as an institutional theater for political or cultural struggle. Carole Oglesby and Eva Auchincloss were among a small network of women’s sports activists who participated in the 1977 Spirit of Houston National Women’s Congress. They recall that the national conference was preceded by more than fifty state and territory conferences in which a “platform” was developed “from the grassroots.”⁷

Ironically, the organizers used an Olympic marathon-like event to generate public awareness and enthusiasm for the upcoming conference. Oglesby and Auchincloss joined women from the National Association for Girls and Women in Sport (NAGWS) to organize a “Torch Run,” a staged run (50 miles per day) with torch in hand from Seneca Falls, New York, to Houston, Texas. Day coordinators arranged to have the torch passed from one female or supportive male runner to the next runner, and 25 people a day carried the symbol forward for two-mile intervals. These were also the days when women’s political struggles for equal rights were being met by conservative opponents like Phyllis Schlafly and the new religious right. The two sides clashed in the state of Georgia, where the opposition convinced an entire day of volunteer runners to back out of the run. The goal was to disrupt and end the run. A marathoner was flown in to carry the torch for twenty-six miles, giving the organizers time to recruit others to complete the run that day. A photo of the marathoner appeared on the cover of a national magazine and, later, on the cover of the published conference proceedings.⁸

A number of women’s sports resolutions did not make it onto the conference platform, but as Oglesby recalls, “I do not think our effort was in vain.” She observed that “the conference was the beginning of the bridge building between the mainstream women’s movement and the women’s sports advocacy movement.”⁹ (During the 1980s and 1990s, there emerged greater awareness and cooperation between women’s sports advocacy organizations (e.g., NAGWS, the Women’s Sports Foundation, and Melpomene) and mainstream feminist organizations (e.g., National Organization for Women, Feminist Majority). Within the latter circles, it was the symbolic significance and appeal of the female athlete as a cultural icon, more than the specific cause of women’s sports advocacy, that was most appreciated.

A similar awakening took place within the American Association of University Women (AAUW), founded in 1881 and a leading proponent of education and equity for women and girls. It was not until 1993 that the topic of gender equity in athletics became the focus of an AAUW regional conference in Buffalo, New York. The March 27 conference “Aspiring Higher: Sports Equity for Women in the 1990s” included sessions on the history of Title IX, sports and teen pregnancy, coaching women athletes, careers for women in sport, and women’s health. Donna Lopiano, executive director of the Women’s Sports Foundation and a leading women’s sports activist, was among several women’s sports advocates to address the conference. Many of the AAUW members who attended the conference reported that for their generation, a pre-Title IX generation, sports had not been part of their girlhood experiences. The conference sparked awareness about gender equity issues in athletics and gave many of those who attended an initial insight into some of the positive developmental impacts that sports can provide girls and women. The regional conference created a ripple effect, and Donna Lopiano was subsequently invited to speak at the national AAUW conference. One outcome was that bridges were built between feminist activists and women’s sports advocates, collaborations that were few in number before the 1990s.

1. Sport, Men and the Gender Order: Critical Feminist Perspectives, ed. Michael Messner and Don Sabo (Champaign, IL: Human Kinetics Publishers, 1990). [↩]
2. See Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex (New York: Knopf, 1952); Susan Brownmiller, Against Our Will: Men, Women and Rape (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1975); Kate Millett, Sexual Politics (Garden, City, NY: Doubleday, 1970); Juliet Mitchell, Women’s Estate (New York, Vintage, 1973); Mary Daly, Gyn-Ecology: the Metaethics of Radical Feminism (Boston: Beacon Press, 1978); Betty Friedan, The Second Stage (New York: Summit Books, 1981). [↩]
3. See Susan Birrell, “Achievement Related Motives and the Woman Athlete”, in Women and Sport: From Myth to Reality, ed. Carole Oglesby, (Philadelphia: Lea & Febiger, 1978); Mary Boutilier and Lucinda San Giovanni, The Sporting Woman (Champaign, IL: Human Kinetics, 1978); Mary Duquin, “The Androgynous Advantage,” in Women and Sport; Mary Duquin, “Power and Authority: Moral Consensus and Conformity in Sport,” International Review for Sociology of Sport 19 (1984): 295-304; Jan Felshin, “The Triple Option for Women in Sport,” Quest 17 (January 1974): 36-40; Susan Greendorfer, “The Nature of Female Socialization into Sport: A Study of Selected College Women’s Sport Participation” (PhD diss., University of Wisconsin, Madison,1974); Susan Greendorfer, “The Role of Socializing Agents in Female Sport Involvement,” Research Quarterly 48 (1978): 304-310; Ann Hall, “Sport and Gender: A Feminist Perspective on the Sociology of Sport,” Canadian Association of Health, Physical Education, and Recreation Sociology of Sport Monograph Series, 1978; Dorothy Harris, “Women and Sport: A National Research Conference,” in Proceedings from the National Research Conference, Women and Sport, Penn State HYPER Series No. 2 (State College, PA: Pennsylvania State University: 1972); Women and Sport, ed. Carol Oglesby; Nancy Theberge, “A Critique of Critiques: Radical and Feminist Writings on Sport,” Social Forces 60 (1981): 341-353. [↩]
4. Some men at this time also adopted feminist perspectives in order to analyze sport as a sexist institution that was problematic for both women and men. See Jock: Sports & Male Identity, ed. Don Sabo & Ross Runfola (Engelwood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1980). This anthology contained many, perhaps even most, of the profeminist writings on men and sport that were generated during the 1970s. [↩]
5. Pat Griffin, Strong Women, Deep Closets: Lesbians and Homophobia in Sport (Champain, IL: Human Kinetics, 1998). [↩]
6. Susan Cahn, Coming on Strong: Gender and Sexuality in Twentieth Century Women’s Sports (New York: Free Press, 1994). [↩]
7. Personal communication, May 2005. [↩]
8. For a video documentary of the Houston conference, go to http://www.mediaprojects.org. [↩]
9. Personal communication, May 5, 2005. [↩]