In the 1900s, some sports began to appear as appropriate outlets for women’s athletic pursuits. Still, the Olympics remained elusive.

            Early women’s sports, like golf and tennis, were approved pursuits of the upper class and an option only for white, upper class women. Who can forget the aloof and alluring professional golfer Jordan Baker in F. Scott Fitzgerald’s 1925 novel, The Great Gatsby?  

            Women got a toehold in the Paris Games of 1900, when 22 of the 997 athletes were women, but they competed only in tennis, golf and croquet. Later, a few other sports, such as sailing and equestrianism, were added as women’s events.

            At that Olympics, golfer Margaret Abbott of Chicago became the first American woman to win Olympic gold. Unlike the men, however, she got a gold-plated ceramic bowl instead of a medal. And, ironically, Abbott never knew she’d won a gold medal. The 1900 games were called the Championnats Internationaux, instead of the Olympic Games. The event was not recognized as an Olympiad until after Abbott’s death in 1955.

Pierre digs in

            However, backward male attitudes still held sway and the Olympics remained out of reach for most female athletes.

            “Women’s sports are the most unaesthetic sight human eyes could contemplate,” sniffed founder Baron Pierre de Coubertin. “The Olympics should be reserved for men… with female applause as its reward.” ^*

            Women struck back, starting their own competitive games, which were held until 1934. But every time they requested full entry into the Olympics, women met “a solid wall of refusal,” said Alice Milliat, a French athlete who founded the women’s games.**

            In 1928, a woman’s race at the Amsterdam Olympics set back the cause of female athletics for decades. After runners competed in an 800-meter race, sportswriters ridiculed the women’s efforts.

            “It was a pitiful spectacle to see the girls tumble down after the finish like dead sparrows,” a writer from the German magazine De Maasbode said. His conclusion? “The distance is far too strenuous for women.”^***

            Piling on, the president of the International Olympic Committee (IOC), Count Henri Baillet-Latour, proposed that all women’s competitions be cut from the Games. While his outrageous suggestion was not taken up, the IOC cut women’s races longer than 200 meters from the Games until 1960, when the 800-meter race was re-introduced. The women’s marathon wasn’t approved until 1984.

Babe bursts on the scene

            The 1930s passed before the finally the IOC began adding women’s sports to the Games in significant numbers. However, progress slowed for all athletes when the Olympics were cancelled by war in 1916, 1940 and 1944. And into the 1960s, individual sports were still the only avenue open to women.

            But outstanding female athletes gradually began to change people’s minds. Mildred “Babe” Didrikson mastered every sport she tried, including golf, track and field, basketball and baseball. She won two gold medals in track and field at the 1932 Los Angeles Summer Olympics, and after turning to professional golf, she won ten Ladies Professional Golf Association major championships.

            Yet, in the press, Didrikson was criticized for her short hair and for wearing pants and  shorts. A sports writer once said of Didrikson, “It would be much better if she and her ilk stayed at home, got themselves prettied up and waited for the phone to ring.”****

            Didrikson just brushed off the insults. She was once asked, “Is there anything you don’t play?” Her answer: “Yeah, dolls.”^*****

            Professional sports and the Olympics were cracking open for women. In my next post, we’ll meet Althea Gibson, an African American woman who crashed the lily white game of tennis.

                                                _______________________

* David Goldblatt. The Games: A Global History of the Olympics (New York: W.W. Norton & Co., 2018), p. 109-110.

** The Games, p. 114.

***The Games, p. 112.

**** Joe Williams, “Let Her Play Golf, Even If She Is a Pro,” the New York World Telegram, reprinted in the Oklahoma News (May 15, 1935), p. 9. In the article, he quotes from an earlier, undated column of his.

***** Karen Blumenthal, Let Me Play: The Story of Title IX: The Law that Changed the Future of Girls in America (New York: Atheneum Books for Young Readers, 2005), p. 57.