The idea that women shouldn’t compete in sports goes way back. Back into antiquity, as a matter of fact. For instance, the storied ancient Olympic games had no female faces gracing the competitions.
The Olympic games began in ancient Greece around 776 BCE. Early athletic competitions included boxing, chariot racing, long jump, javelin, discus, running and wrestling. Initially, the games were a one-day event, but in 684 BCE, they were extended to three days, and in the fifth century BCE, they were expanded to five days.
In these Olympics, only freeborn Greek men could participate. One participant’s name might be familiar. At 18 years old, Greek philosopher and mathematician Pythagoras — whose ideas about geometry you might have studied — took the top prize in wrestling at the 552 BCE Olympics.
Oh, the glory of olives and cows!
While single women could watch the men’s games, a married woman who was caught as a spectator faced execution. But even in the face of such peril, women refused to let their athletic dreams die.
In ancient Greece, women held their own festival every five years to honor the goddess Hera. The festivities included foot races for girls and single women in three age groups. The winners were awarded crowns of olive leaves and a portion of a cow that they sacrificed to the goddess.
Over the centuries, the Olympic Games came and went, according to the political will of the rulers in power. Gradually, they were opened to wider participation from other countries. But after the country’s Roman conquerors adopted Christianity, they banned native religious practices. Since the Olympic games were a celebration in honor of the god Zeus, they had no place in the Christian empire. The emperor Theodosius I abolished the games in 394 A.D.
Are you going to Greenwich fair?
That didn’t mean that sports competitions lie dormant over the centuries. Olympic style games continued to be held all over the world.
In 1726, the French writer Voltaire was arrested and exiled to England after he insulted an aristocrat. Sailing up the Thames River, he landed in Greenwich, just outside of London, on the day of its annual fair. A huge crowd was gathered to watch games, races and regattas.
Voltaire was astonished to see women on horseback and on foot, preparing for races. In the female runners, he noted “a vivacity in their movements and an air of satisfaction in their faces.”*
The original Games themselves remained fresh in people’s minds, no matter how much time elapsed. Even Shakespeare recalled the glory of the Games in his play “Henry VI.” Prince George spurs on his troops at York with these words:
And, if we thrive, promise them such rewards
As victors wear at the Olympian Games.**
Enter Pierre
In the late 1800s, Frenchman Pierre de Coubertin began dreaming of reviving the Olympics. He had visited public boys schools in England and was impressed by their emphasis on physical fitness as a means of building character and furthering academic success and moral growth. While there, he also attended English country fairs that included sporting competitions.
In 1894, he founded the forerunner to today’s International Olympic Committee and invited nine countries to compete. In 1896, the first modern Olympics were held in Athens, and the Olympics that we know today grew out of these early games.
But one aspect of the Games remained the same — female athletes were excluded.
We’ll explore later how women gradually broke open those iconic Olympic rings just enough to squeeze through. It took a lot of strength! And Title IX had a lot to do with it.
______________________
* James Parton, Life of Voltaire, Vol. 1 (Cambridge, England: Riverside Press, 1881), p. 195-96. In 1835, Charles Dickens wrote a sketch under the pen name of Boz titled “Greenwich Fair,” published first in The London Evening Chronicle and later in Sketches by Boz. In 1856, Nathaniel Hawthorne wrote in “A London Suburb” that he was repulsed by the festivities, complaining that fairgoers “have no daily familiarity with even so necessary a thing as a washbowl, not to mention a bathing tub.”
** William Shakespeare, Henry VI, Part 3, Act 2, Scene 3.