Female Spectators, Agency, and the Politics of Pleasure: An Historical Case Study from Australian Rules Football

Abstract

This paper explores descriptions, commentary and critiques regarding the Melbourne women who came to follow Australian Rules football with notable passion in the late 1800s and early 1900s. While it is known that the press represented female spectators in various ways, the depictions of the women who shouted and ‘barracked’ in a manner similar to the men have not been studied in detail. This paper aims to redress this by drawing on the women’s and ‘social’ pages of Melbourne newspapers, especially those of the ‘Ladies Letters’ published in Melbourne Punch. Purportedly written by upper class women, these letters provide an intriguing perspective on the zealous spectator culture that was emerging around Australian Rules football, the women who were a key part of this culture, and the broader debates and politics around women’s rights and gender identity. At issue are intersecting questions of pleasure, rationality, class, gender and race that shed light on the new cultural category of the ‘barracker’.