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Essay about Women in Sports

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Women in Sports

Doctor Chandler Gilman once said, “In women, inferiority of the locomotive apparatus of physical labour, is apparent in all parts… The brain is both absolutely and relatively smaller than in men. Women have an abundant supply of soft and semi-fluid cellular tissue which creates softness and delicacy of mind, low power, nonresistance, passivity and under favourable circumstances, a habit of self-sacrifice.” This is one of many taken-for-granted beliefs, which was typical in the past and seen quite frequently up to thirty years ago. Throughout history, women actively participated in sports in a patriarchal society and the viewpoint was that women were depicted as weaker and not as capable of physical activity, that …show more content…

So what is the history of women’s involvement in sport? The reason and occasions for participation have varied from religious festivals to symbolic achievements of adulthood to recreation for health and fun. In the past women were forbidden to participate in or to even view the Olympic Games of ancient Greece, therefore women established their own program of sports competition, which they named the Heraen Games after Hera, the wife of Zeus. It was considered tolerable for women to keep healthy in order to be good “breeders.” The glories of true athletic success were reserved for the men of ancient Greece, and the winners became religious, political and cultural heroes. Women were not part of what was considered to be real sport but were “sporting nonetheless. In the American colonial experience, a similar pattern emerges of women’s participation. Women were restricted by the patriarchs of their communities in the games they could play, but evidence from journals, diaries, letters, and newspapers of the times indicates that the “ladies” of some wealth included dancing, “spectatoring of horse and boat races, skating, sleighing, kolven and golf. The physical activities were socially defined

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