Playing With the Boys: Why Separate is Not Equal in Sports Review

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(More customer reviews)This book takes an in-depth look at the history of sports and womens inequalities and how far women have come. But it really make you realize how far women have to go. It is jam packed with examples of how segregating sports has lead to completely unequal treatment and how this not only effects top athletes but also all women. Women have proven over and over that they are not inferior in other areas - why is the sports arena any different? Let the games begin! I especially liked this book because the facts are so interesting and the authors presents them in a way that makes the book entertaining as well as informative. Anyone interested in gender equality would enjoy this book.

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Athletic contests help define what we mean in America by "success." By keeping women from "playing with the boys" on the false assumption that they are inherently inferior, society relegates them to second-class citizens. In this forcefully argued book, Eileen McDonagh and Laura Pappano show in vivid detail how women have been unfairly excluded from participating in sports on an equal footing with men. Using dozens of powerful examples--girls and women breaking through in football, ice hockey, wrestling, and baseball, to name just a few--the authors show that sex differences are not sufficient to warrant exclusion in most sports, that success entails more than brute strength, and that sex segregation in sports does not simply reflect sex differences, but actively constructs and reinforces stereotypes about sex differences. For instance, women's bodies give them a physiological advantage in endurance sports, yet many Olympic events have shorter races for women than men, thereby camouflaging rather than revealing women's strengths.

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Women and Sports in the United States: A Documentary Reader Review

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(More customer reviews)This is an excellent compiliation of some of the best ground breaking research and writings on women in sport. It is helpful to read the discourses on women's bodies which helps us to trace the source of culturally biased scientific research agendas on athletes and on women specifically. Juxtaposed with other more familiar writings on these topics, the text becomes an all important marker for the next generation of sport and gender scholars.

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A spectacular transformation in women's sports has occurred over the past century in colleges, high schools, and recreational leagues across the nation. Gradual changes during the late 1950s and 1960s within the fields of women's physical education and amateur sport provided the initial energy for this transformation. But it took the rebirth of a grassroots feminist movement in the late 1960s and 1970s to catalyze the radical changes in women's athletic opportunities and attitudes toward female athletes. The assimilation of feminist principles into the broader popular culture solidified the belief that sport plays a positive role in the lives of girls and women. Political activists for women's rights codified this attitude with the passage of Title IX of the 1972 Federal Education Amendments, a law banning gender discrimination in educational settings, thus guaranteeing women's legal right to an equitable share of athletic opportunities and resources. Though the sea change in American women's sports is evident in schools, the media, and local playing fields, scholars are still in the early stages of fully examining the causes and impacts of this historic change. Women and Sports in the United States brings together scholarly articles, journalism, political and legal documents, and first-person accounts that collectively explore women's sports in America, with emphasis on the post-Title IX era.This book was published with the generous support of the Center for the Study of Sport in Society at Northeastern University.

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