Jean Williams

The fastest growing sport? women's football in England

Britain pioneered the first phase of footballs popularity among women during, and shortly after, the First World War. The English Football Association found this threat to the idea of football as a game for men sufficiently serious to ban womens football in 1921. Shortly after the ban was lifted, over five decades later, the Sex Discrimination Act of 1975 was drafted with the intention of exempting professional football from advances in female equality. The relevant clause that limits womens access to competitive football continues to survive and equality of opportunity continues to be contested at all levels of the game. Nevertheless, women express several kinds of freedom when they participate in football, in spite of the traditional stereotypical media slur of women players as either ‘butch ’or ‘girly’. This contentious connection means that in the foreseeable future womens football in England will continue to be about much more than the game itself.

Namibia's Brave Gladiators: gendering the sport and development nexus from the 1998 2nd World Women and Sport Conference to the 2011 Women's World Cup

This paper introduces womens football development in Namibia from 1998 to 2011 as a case study to argue that presumed synergies of sport and development could overshadow the long-term effects of under-funding, discrimination and bureaucratic inertia. There are three key themes arising from this discussion. First, the often-piecemeal sport-for-development initiatives are compared with a relative lack of sustainable long-term provision of sports infrastructure for girls and women. Second, sport for international development and peace programmes frequently claim to ‘empower’ girls without helping to create a community that is ready to embrace young women who have, indeed, become more confident and assertive. This raises the complicated issue of the significance of role models for women and girls. Having visible and respected female athletes in a community can help to shift perceptions around gender, but these effects are difficult to measure. Finally, the work concludes with cautious optimism.

Kit: Fashioning the Sporting Body – Introduction to the Special Edition

This is an introductory essay for the special edition of Sport in History entitled ‘Kit: Fashioning the Sporting Body’. As well as giving an overview of the six articles in the collection, the introduction seeks to give an overview of sport and dress history. It then raises questions of the intersection of national style, costume history and sporting fashion as active and leisurewear.

Women, Football and History: International Perspectives

This paper provides an overview of a collection of works related to women and football from international perspectives. After a general discursive introduction, the material discussed has its emphasis on studies connected to women and football that occur outside the locus of established scholarship. In particular, it is noted that the works concentrate on the geographic locations of New Zealand, Australia and the USA, and four major football codes are covered. The investigations are also not limited to women playing football, but female spectators and coterie groups are also considered. In terms of variety, different methodological and theoretical approaches are adopted, and a range of time periods are reflected on. Given the existing state of play, it would seem there is still much to be uncovered, documented and written about when it comes to women and the football codes. The conclusion is that any research agenda that emerges from observations on international perspectives concerning the relationship of women with football will continue to resonate and add value to wider understandings of sport and gender.

Sport and Literature A Special Issue of Sport in History: Introduction

This special issue of Sport in History presents the work of several academics who explore the literary representation of sport. A number of disciplines are covered literary criticism, sociology and cultural studies as well as history itself. Also present therefore are a variety of methodological approaches that range from looking at large-scale topics such as the centre and periphery (of writing and geographically) to looking at those of a more modest scale, including community consciousness and how it might be conveyed, and to what may be called self-narration (recently described as an ‘emotional turn’). Some contributors combine all, or most, of these in an interdisciplinary approach. Each contribution has its own style; as a whole the collection offers variety in method, conception, focus, period and place. We have considered it important to have this range of perspective. Equally we felt that, although we might see links, in treatments of competing masculinities for example, or questions of generational continuity and conflict, it would be artificial to group the articles according to any preset ‘themes’. There is no ‘party line’, but in exploring literature we wanted to stretch our readers’ expectations. The ‘core’ readership of the journal is based on historians, but not all its readers are confined to history; nor, we feel, should historians themselves be. The opening up of the subject in recent years through exposure to multiple influences and methodologies across the humanities and social sciences has, many would argue, been beneficial to the subject. Some, though, might regard what has been imported from other disciplines as undesirable, as recent debates in the journal suggest. Whatever criticisms might be voiced about this journal and its contents, however, over-adventurousness can scarcely be seen as a fault: the standard fare of Sport in History has been, and will no doubt continue to be, aligned with the mainstream traditions of the discipline. We hope, therefore, that this foray into ‘hybridization’

The Curious Mystery of the Cotswold ‘Olimpick’ Games: Did Shakespeare Know Dover … and Does it Matter?

The first half of this article looks at the period 1612 to 1642, when Robert Dover reinvented the existing Cotswold Games as annual ‘Olimpick’ celebrations of sport and, to an extent, culture. The second section reviews subsequent published editions of the Annalia Dubrensia, a collection of poems written in celebration of the games and first published by Dover in 1636. Examining the changing meaning of the Annalia as a text is intended to critique simplistic notions that place our sporting and literary heritage as part of the ‘Merrie England’ industry, particularly in the context of the so-called Cultural Olympiad in the approach to 2012.

Given the Boot: Reading the Ambiguities of British and Continental Football Boot Design

The robust design of the mass-produced British football boot from the late nineteenth century onwards appeared to evolve rather slowly compared with subsequent lightweight, flexible ‘continental’ fabrication. However, with careful reading we can identify considerable overlap and influence between manufacturers, distributors and retailers. Boot and shoe manufacturing was an intensely competitive industry and it was in the interests of entrepreneurs to pioneer advances in order to promote a particular brand. In developing football boots for the mass market this may have included much pseudo-science but even small innovations sought to improve performance and market share. Design ambiguities were also inherent because footwear manufacturers routinely borrowed and appropriated successful design elements for their own products. With more choice and consumer demand, football boots became increasingly less adapted from other outdoor footwear owned by the participant, to specialised models manufactured as part of the flourishing sporting goods industry. The internationalisation of the mass market for football boots is here explored though the distinct but related case studies of two family firms; Manfield from Northamptonshire, England and Adidas from Herzogenaurach, Germany. Arguing that there was much continuity between the designs and manufacturing processes of the two firms, the article explores how the design of the football boot became increasingly influenced by the fashion industry as items of conspicuous consumption. By 1954 the launch of the training shoe saw sportswear become a style trend worn on the street, rather than on the pitch. This in turn, influenced football boot design as both a highly technical item of elite sportswear and an expensive, aspirational essential in an everyday kitbag.

Representing Self, Community and Nation: The Empire and Commonwealth Games Careers of Influential British Women Athletes 1930–1966

The beginnings of British Empire sports in 1911 were soon followed by the increased recognition of female athletes at the 1912 Stockholm Olympic Games with the swimming gold medal won by the British 4 × 100 metres freestyle relay team (Isabella Moore of Scotland, Irene Steer of Wales, Annie Spiers and Jennie Fletcher of England). The first British Empire Games were held in Hamilton, Ontario Province in Canada from 16 to 23 August 1930 and were a relatively small affair, soon followed by the much larger 1932 Los Angeles Olympic Games. Despite the relative difference in size, female athletes represented England, Wales and Scotland and the Republic of Ireland at British Empire, then Empire and Commonwealth Games, in a distinct articulation of the sporting self, community and nation. The article concludes with the British Empire and Commonwealth Games held in Kingston, Jamaica from 4 to 13 August 1966 because this was the first time that the games had been held outside the so-called White Dominions. During the period of analysis, an Empire or Commonwealth gold medal was presented in World Sports, the official magazine of the British Olympic Association, as a ‘championship’ title and this nuances our understanding of Olympic titles relative to Empire and Commonwealth victories in the popular imagination. The discussion traces the gradual evolution of the female schedule in the British Empire Games and argues that it was important to the careers and public recognition of women such as Scottish swimmer Helen Orr (Eleanor) Gordon and Englands Mary Glen Haig, the fencer who became the third woman to sit on the International Olympic Committee in 1983 and who should, maybe, have won a gold Olympic medal but never did.

Frisky and Bitchy: Unlikely British Olympic Heroes?

This work begins with a brief biographical overview of the career of bridge player and writer Rixi Markus (1910–1992). To a lesser extent, it gives an account of her sometime partner Fritzi Gordon (1916–1992). Following the naturalization of both women in 1950, and together known as ‘Frisky and Bitchy’, they were to become widely acknowledged as the strongest womens partnership in world bridge in the years between 1951 and 1976. In the memoir A Vulnerable Game, published in 1988, Rixi detailed her experiences as an upper-middle-class Jewish emigrant who escaped to London and made her home there after the Austrian Anschluss in 1938. A measure of Anglophilia as a British Jew did little to affect her increasingly Zionist sympathies from the 1950s onwards, however. There are consequently three thematic questions to be addressed via this examination of a mature or ‘late’ autobiography, as A Vulnerable Game was Rixis twelfth and final book. Firstly, given that one partial effect of the Eastern European Jewish diaspora was arguably to Austrianize bridge – until then played in Britain mostly by elderly enthusiasts behind closed doors – actually how ‘British’ was the post-war game? Secondly, with the inauguration of the so-called bridge Olympiads from 1960 onwards, in what ways is it meaningful to consider Frisky and Bitchy as part of British Olympic tradition? Thirdly, by the end of the 1970s international bridge, with Rixi Markus as its most famous female ‘face’, was both fashionable and part of the Establishments pastimes. Have we so far underestimated female competitors as writers and entrepreneurs in forming their own eponymous brands and in popularizing their sport?

Standing on Honeyball’s Shoulders: A History of Independent Women’s Football Clubs in England

In 1951, the editors of a volume called Sport for Girls published the results of a survey of 4238 young female readers in the United Kingdom. Aged between 11 and 18 years, those surveyed were asked which hobbies they preferred. 1 Of the respondents, 96 % said that they were interested in sport, leaving 3.2 % to declare no enthusiasm and the small remainder undecided. Without giving too much significance to the findings therefore, sport generally compared favourably with other hobbies such as reading (50 %) and dancing (36 %).