Women's sport - The Foundations
Historically, British athletics can proudly claim a major contribution to the development of women’s sport, both here and abroad. That healthy contribution is continuing into the 21st century. Any review of influences affecting women's sport must include the view through the prism of coaching. It is important to remind ourselves of what we have been up against in the past and how remnants of old attitudes still have a lingering influence.
Surprisingly, foot racing (petticoat races) and boxing booths for women at country fairs and occasional pedestrianism involving girls and women covering prodigious distances for wagers can be traced back to the 18th Century. By the early 20th century recreational sport was starting to become established for the masses and the late 19th and early 20th Centurys saw the establishment of national and international organisations to run it. Women started to feel their sporting feet in the 1920s and the development of school sport laid a firm foundation for female participation. Athletics for women and girls became a popular activity, producing many internationally significant performances across most events, and 53,000 spectators watched a women’s football match on Boxing Day, 1920.
The development of school sport for girls laid a firm foundation for female participation. Athletics for women and girls became a popular activity, producing many internationally significant performances across most events.
- Margaret Balasco high jumped 4’10”/1.47 at the Inter Kent County sports for girls in 1914. Her sister Joan leapt an amazing 5”4’/1.625 in the same meeting in 1920, although as ropes or bamboo canes were used at that time, we cannot know how accurately these heights were measured. However, they would have had landing areas similar to a coir doormat, which would obviously limit technique to that which produced a controlled landing on the feet.
- Violet Piercy ran 3:4:22 for the marathon at Chiswick in 1926!
- Nellie Halstead ran 56.8 for 440yards on 9th July, 1932
However, even while all this was happening, a social backlash was brewing. The International Olympic Committee had already rejected the newly formed Federation Feminine Sportive de France’s pleas for women’s events in the Olympics in 1919. In 1921 the Football Associated banned women from playing on their grounds, effectively wiping out the women’s game until 1971 when the ban was rescinded. The AAA told the WAAA that they would be better off on their own when the women applied for affiliation in 1923.
| 1885 | First women's track and field meeting, Ploughkeepsie, New York State. |
| 1919 | IOC rejects plea for women's events in the Olymic Games |
| 1921 | The Federation Sportive Feminine Internationale Formed by Alice Milliat, a Frence rower. |
| 1922 | FSFI stages first world games - the Women's Olympics (women only, and with 11-13 events). They subsequently agreed to stop using the word 'Olympics' in exchange for limited inclusion (5 events) in the IOC's program. The FSFI continued to hold their own Women's World Games every 4 years until 1934. |
| 1922 | WAAA formed in Britiain. |
| 1923 | WAAA application to join the AAA denied. |
| 1928 | Five women's events included in the Amsterdam Olympic games - the 100m, 800m, 4x100m relay, the high jump and the discus. Following the 800m, women are banned from competing in any event further than 200m because several competitors appeared to "collaspe" (a common occurence for competitors on both sexes after an 800m, both before and since) after the race. |
| 1936 | FSFI merges with the IAAF - but no female representation on the council until 1995, as with the AAA and the WAAA in 1991 |
| 1937 | British Amateur Athletic Board is formed, and the WAAA is allowed representation. |
| 1960 | The 400m and the 800m are reinstated to the Olympic program. |
| 1991 | All women's associations merge with men's. |
| 1997 | First combined AAA and WAAA championships. |
The prejudices of the heavily male dominated society of the time were backed up, or perhaps led, by the medical profession, which constantly churned out warnings about the potential damage to female reproductive functions and the generally masculinising effect of physical exertion, a prime example of the way in which apparently objective "scientific" judgement is in fact immersed in the culture of the time. Heterosexual females, of course, also internalised these and other assumptions regarding the limitations of their sex and, as a sex, unconsciously accepted that it was in their own best interests to agree a very narrow vision of their destiny. As we shall see psychological gender difference seems to reinforce this at an inter-personal level, thus making a key psychological requirement for performance – control over self – difficult for many women.
World records by British Women (1922 – 1940)
| Mary Lanes | 60m | 7.8 | 1922 |
| 100yd | 11.8 | 1921 | |
| 100yd | 11.6 | 1922 | |
| 100m | 12.8 | 1922 | |
| 220yd | 26.8 | 1922 | |
| 400m | 26.8 | 1922 | |
| 400m | 64.4 | 1923 | |
| 800m | 62.4 | 1923 | |
| Rose Thompson | 100yd | 11.4 | 1923 |
| Alice Cast | 200m | 27.8 | 1922 |
| Eileen Edwards | 400m | 60.8 | 1924 |
| Ethal Toes | 880yd | 3:04.2 | 1920 |
| Susan Walt | 880yd | 2.54.0 | 1921 |
| N.M Hicks | 880yd | 2.45.0 | 1922 |
| Olive Hall | 880yd | 2.17.4 | 1936 |
| Edith Trickey | 1000m | 3.08.2 | 1924 |
| Gladys Lunn | 1000m | 3.04.4 | 1931 |
| 1000m | 3.00.6 | 1934 | |
| Elizabeth Atkinson | Mile | 6.13.2 | 1921 |
| Ruth Christmas | Mile | 5.27.5 | 1932 |
| Gladys Lunn | Mile | 5.23.5 | 1932 |
| Mile | 5.20.0 | 1936 | |
| Evelyne Forster | Mile | 5.15.3 | 1939 |
| Violet Piercy | Marathon | 3.40:22 | 1926 |
| Margaret Belasco | High Jump | 1.47m | 1914 |
| Joan Balasco | High Jump | 1.62m | 1920 (bamboo cane bar) |
| Phyllis Green | High Jump | 1.52m | 1926 |
| High Jump | 1.55m | 1926 | |
| 220yd | 26.2 | 1924 | |
| 200m | 26.0 | 1926 | |
| 200m | 25.4 | 1927 | |
| Dorothy Odam | High Jump | 1.65m | 1939 |
| Muriel Gunn | Long Jump | 5.48m | 1926 |
| Long Jump | 5.57m | 1927 |
