Britain's Olympic Women: A History

Abstract

In recent years, scholars have considered many facets of British sports. They have gone beyond the simple narrative of great moments and characters from the worlds of football, cricket, and rugby to consider the ways in which the British military used sports in its training programs. Other studies have introduced readers to the way that noncombatant British men used sport to validate their masculinity during World War II and to examine the role of sport in the expansion of the British Empire and how men from Trinidad and Nigeria used proficiency in sport to assert their refusal to acquiesce to their colonial status. Occasionally, those studies alluded to women's role, but only in rare cases have the experiences of female British athletes been used to elucidate such urgent matters as the Cold War in sports. Happily, those interested in a broader study of British women's sport have a new narrative examining women's sport by studying the biographies of significant equestriennes, swimmers, fencers, and football players and how those women dealt with the obstacles in the way of their success.In Britain's Olympic Women, Jean Williams has accomplished a remarkable feat in delving into publicly accessible information, family archives, oral histories, and even a particular episode of Monty Python's Flying Circus to tell individual women's stories and draw larger lessons from those stories. In doing so, Williams provides insights into the work scholars do to understand their subject. Sometimes the archives do not exist, sometimes they are inaccessible, and sometimes they exist only because families maintained them, but Williams does what she can to tell the reader what she has discovered and to offer suggestions to others wishing to learn more about the sporting experience of British women. For student readers of this book who want to find topics for research, the suggestions are invaluable.As Williams explains, opportunities for female athletes were limited by a variety of factors. For equestriennes, access to good horses and time to train them made their development possible. For swimmers, access to local swimming clubs was invaluable. For working-class women, the occasional support offered by their employers proved to be crucial. But even where women had access to these opportunities, their ability to play was limited both locally and internationally by the men who controlled the Olympics and similar organizations. For the first half of the twentieth century, for example, female athletes were effectively barred from eventing and show jumping because those disciplines were limited to uniformed officers. Likewise, women whose best running events were in the longer distances were essentially barred from the Olympics because of decisions to limit competition between female athletes to shorter distances. In this book, Williams shows the diverse efforts of women to get around those constraints.As she explains, there was an effort by the French feminist Alice Milliat to establish a separate but equal athletic tournament for women during the 1920s. In Britain, other women created the Women's Amateur Athletic Association, which endeavored to ensure female athletes received appropriate coaching and greater opportunities to compete. But it was only after World War II and the Soviet Union entered into world athletics that British women received the chance to show their patriotism (and commitment to their nonathletic housewife lives) on the field. British media endorsed those ideas, making the tale of encounters between British and Soviet women into the broader postwar narrative of plucky little Britain holding its own against the state-supported athletes of the Eastern Bloc. As the century progressed, British universities, most notably Loughborough, continued studies on the effect of sport on women's bodies, which also helped increase sporting opportunities, as it was established, incontrovertibly, that there were no ill health results from intense exercise.By the end of the Second Millennium, the British government stepped up to support athletes by providing money for coaching, travel, and equipment after the poor results achieved at the Olympics of 1992 and 1996. This support grew quickly after London was awarded the 2012 Games, as the men and women of “Team GB” grew into a force to be reckoned with. Meanwhile, professional leagues modeled on men's leagues began to open up more opportunities, especially for female footballers. And, of course, any narrative such as this has to include the role of the British royal family, especially the Princess Royal, who cemented British enthusiasm for equestrian events.This is a fine book that should be of interest to both the general reader and specialist. It is organized by chapters with notes at the end of each and affords anyone interested in a particular time period excellent places to begin following their own threads to learn more.