Culture Of American Sports

1358 Words6 Pages
Explain the ways women participated in sporting activities and how these practices illustrated gender differences. 1) In early America, many women would not go to sporting events. If anything, they might have attended a shooting match as a spectator. Women mainly did activities such as quilting and sewing, but not sports activities. By the 1840s, a group of American women emerged with the first women’s rights movement, creating more opportunities for women. This movement also influenced sports participation. During the rise in female athleticism, certain sports were deemed suitable for beginning women players. One of the popular womanly sports was croquet. In the Victorian era, women were urged to be home-oriented, with the main responsibility to raise children. Men worked outside the home and were supposed to be the visible leaders of the community. Sports typically encouraged impulsiveness with a group of men drinking, wagering, and shouting while watching a prizefight The advocacy of regular calisthenics for young women by such reformers such as Catharine Beecher won limited support. Females were stilled viewed by the public as suited only for walking and not vigorous exercise. In this same era, intercollegiate athletics took on different meanings for women students. Educators were confronted with the argument that the rigors of intellectual activity damaged the health of young women, especially the proper growth of their reproductive systems. Educators responded that a carefully monitored exercise program could prevent such harm. Consequently, physical training became an integral part of the curriculum for women. Rather than vigorous sports, the programs entailed mostly mild exercises. Although women rowed, hiked, rode horseback, ice skated, and on a few campuses even played baseball and field hockey prior to the 1890s, in most places
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