ABSTRACT

Any discussion of the status of women in the sport context would benefit greatly from examining the underlying premises regarding the definition of ‘woman’ within (and outside) that context. Even on the surface level it becomes readily apparent to even the less-informed reader that the story to be told of women’s participation in sport in general is the story of two ideals in apparent conflict. For example, from inception, the ancient and modern Olympic Games, and the ideal of the Olympic athletes, applied specifically and exclusively to men. From Pausanias’ references to dropping women from the side of a cliff if they even observed the ancient Olympic Games, to de Coubertin’s ideal that the goals that were to be achieved by the athletes through participation in the Olympic Games were not appropriate for women (de Coubertin 1912), one can easily see that the place of women in sport has been, for the most part, foreign at best. It is this basic idea, the idea that sport, (or sometimes even physical activity) particularly high-level competitive sport, is somehow incompatible with what women are, or what they should be, that must dominate any discussion of the unique issues for women in sport. Philosophies of ideal sport, and ideal women, lie behind discussions of permitting women to compete, of choosing the types of sport in which women can compete, in developing judging standards for adjudicated (as opposed to refereed) sports – contrast gymnastics and basketball – in attitudes to aggression, and competition, and indeed to the very existence of women’s sport as a separate entity at all.