Women's sports
The participation of women and girls in sports, physical fitness, and exercise has existed throughout history. However, participation rates and activities vary in accordance with nation, era, geography, and stage of economic development.
Until roughly [|1870], women's activities tended to be informal and recreational in nature, lacked rules codes, and emphasized physical activity rather than competition. Today, women's sports are more sport-specific and have developed into both amateur levels and professional levels in various places internationally, but is found primarily within developed countries where conscious organization and accumulation of wealth has occurred. In the mid-to-latter part of the 20th century, female participation in sport and the popularization of their involvement increased, particularly during its last quarter. Very few organized sports have been invented by women. Sports such as Newcomb ball, netball, acrobatic gymnastics, and tumbling, and possibly stoolball, are examples.
Women's involvement in sports is more visible in well-developed countries and today their level of participation and performance still varies greatly by country and by sport. Despite an increase in women's participation in sport, the male demographic is still the larger of the two. These demographic differences are observed globally. Female dominated sports are the one exception. Girls' participation in sports tend to be higher in the United States than in other parts of the world like Western Europe and Latin America. Girls' participation in more violent contact sports is far less than that of their male counterparts.
Two important divisions exist in relation to female sporting categories. These sports either emerged exclusively as an organized female sport with male exclusion or were developed as an organized female variant of a sport first popularized by a male demographic and therefore became a female category. In all but a few exceptional cases, such as in the case of camogie, a female variant, or "women's game" uses the same name of the sport popularly played by men, but is classified into a different category which is differentiated by sex: men's or women's, or girls or boys. Female variants are widely common while organized female sports by comparison are rare and include team sports such as netball, throwball, artistic swimming, and ringette. In female sports, the supposed benefits of gender parity, gender equity and sex segregation are controversial.
Except in a few rare cases like women's professional tennis, professional women's sport rarely provide competitors with a livable income. In addition, competing for media coverage of the women's variant of a sport which is primarily popular among males, creates complex barriers. More recently, there has been an increasing amount of interest, research, investment and production in regards to [|equipment design for female athletes]. Interest and research involving the identification of [|sex-specific injuries], particularly though not exclusively among high performance female athletes, has increased as well, such as in the case of concussions and the female athlete triad, "Relative energy deficiency in sport".
At times female athletes have engaged in social activism in conjunction with their participation in sport. Protest methods have included playing strikes, social media campaigns, and in the case of America, federal lawsuits on grounds of inequality, usually as it relates to gender parity principles, American law and Title IX which demand schools that any funds given to support students' sports should be equally distributed between boys and girls. Public service oriented promotional campaigns for girls in sport involve a variety of media campaign styles.
History
Ancient civilizations
Before each ancient Olympic Games a separate women's athletic event was held at the stadium in Olympia, called the Heraean Games and was dedicated to the goddess Hera. In ancient Greek mythology there was the belief that Heraea was founded by Hippodameia, the wife of the king who founded the Olympics. According to E. Norman Gardiner:Although married women were excluded from the Olympics even as spectators, Cynisca won an Olympic game as owner of a chariot, as did Euryleonis, Belistiche, Zeuxo, Encrateia and Hermione, Timarete, Theodota and Kassia.
After the classical period, there was some participation by women in men's athletic festivals. Women in Sparta began to practice the same athletic exercises that men did, exhibiting the qualities of Spartan soldiers. Plato even supported women in sports by advocating running and sword-fighting for women.
Notably, cultural representations of a pronounced female physicality were not limited to sport in Ancient Greece and can also be found in representations of a group of warrioresses known as the Amazons.
In Book Six of the Odyssey, Nausicaa and her handmaidens engage in light sport as they're waiting for the clothes they've washed to dry...
Early modern
During the Song, Yuan, and Ming dynasties, women played in professional Cuju teams. Cuju, also known as Tsu Chu, was an ancient Chinese ball game that is considered to be the predecessor of modern-day football. The sport of Cuju reached climax in the Song dynasty and was one of the most popular sports in Chinese society during that time. It was first recorded in the 3rd century BC and was played by both men and women. Women's Cuju was different from men's Cuju in a few ways. First, the women's ball was smaller and lighter. Second, the women played with smaller teams and on a smaller field. Third, the women were not allowed to use their hands or feet to touch the ball. Instead, they used their heads and chests to control the ball. Women's Cuju was a popular sport for centuries in China. It was played by women of all social classes and ages. The game was often played during festivals and holidays.File:Chujutu.jpg|thumb|Chinese ladies playing cuju, by the Ming dynasty painter Du Jin
Modern era
Late 17th century
The educational committees of the French Revolution included intellectual, moral, and physical education for both girls and boys. With the victory of Napoleon less than twenty years later, physical education was reduced to military preparedness for boys and men. In Germany, the physical education of GutsMuths included girl's education. This included the measurement of performances of girls. This led to women's sport being more actively pursued in Germany than in most other countries. When the Fédération Sportive Féminine Internationale was formed as an all women's international organization it had a German male vice-president in addition to German international success in elite sports.19th and early 20th centuries
Few women competed in sports in Europe and North America before the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Although women were technically permitted to participate in many sports, relatively few did. Those who did participate often faced disapproval. Early women's professional sports leagues during the early part of the 20th century foundered. These women's "sports" were more focused on fitness, beauty, weight and health.Women's sports in the late 1800s focused on correct posture, facial and bodily beauty, muscles, and health. Before 1870, activities for women were recreational rather than sport-specific and emphasized physical activity rather than competition. Sports for women before the 20th century placed more emphasis on fitness rather than the competitive aspects we now associate with organized sports.
In 1916 the Amateur Athletic Union held its first national championship for women, In 1923 the AAU also sponsored the First American Track & Field championships for women. Earlier that year the Women's Amateur Athletic Association held the first WAAA Championships.
Bicycling became a popular activity among women in the suffragette era. "Bicycling has done more to emancipate women than anything else in the world," Susan B. Anthony said. "I stand and rejoice every time I see a woman ride on a wheel. It gives women a feeling of freedom and self-reliance."
The Olympics and women
The first Olympic games in the modern era in 1896 were not open to women. Since then the number of women who have participated in the Olympic games have increased substantially. Many girls and women had lots of opportunities to join the Olympics.The modern Olympics had female competitors from 1900 onward, though women at first participated in considerably fewer events than men. Women first made their appearance in the Olympic Games in Paris in 1900. That year, 22 women competed in tennis, sailing, croquet, equestrian, and golf. The International Olympic Committee founder Pierre de Coubertin described women's sports "impractical, uninteresting, unaesthetic, and we are not afraid to add: incorrect". However, the 6th IOC Congress in Paris 1914 decided that a woman's medal had formally the same weight as a man's in the official medal table. This left the decisions about women's participation to the individual international sports federations. Concern over the physical strength and stamina of women led to the discouragement of female participation in more physically strenuous sports.
In response to the lack of support for women's international sport the Fédération Sportive Féminine Internationale was founded in France by Alice Milliat. This organization initiated the Women's Olympiad and the Women's World Games, which attracted participation of nearly 20 countries and was held four times. In 1924 the 1924 Women's Olympiad was held at Stamford Bridge in London. The International Olympic Committee began to incorporate greater participation of women at the Olympics in response. The number of Olympic women athletes increased over five-fold in the period, going from 65 at the 1920 Summer Olympics to 331 at the 1936 Summer Olympics.
Amateur competitions became the primary venue for women's sports. Throughout the mid-twentieth century, Communist countries dominated many Olympic sports, including women's sports, due to state-sponsored athletic programs that were technically regarded as amateur. The legacy of these programs endured, as former Communist countries continue to produce many of the top female athletes. Germany and Scandinavia also developed strong women's athletic programs in this period.