‘What an absurdity’: Penny Chuter and the polemics of progress in British rowing during the early 1970s

Abstract

ABSTRACT‘What an absurdity’: thus railed ‘P. Barnsby, Male Coach’ in the Letters page of Rowing magazine in August 1973, on the appointment of Penny Chuter as professional rowing coach for the Amateur Rowing Association (ARA). The flurry of responses prompted by his letter suggest that his views were not aligned with the majority of the rowing community; yet women’s role and position in the sport was still highly contested. Chuter’s appointment as an ARA National Coach, an elite level role with responsibility for the national squad as well as coach education in clubs, complicated and extended this polemic. Situated at the intersection of societal fears around female athleticism, employment and leadership – and the ideological conflict within the conservative Amateur Rowing Association about professional coaches regardless of gender – it provoked the rowing community to express some of its most profound uncertainties and anxieties about gender, and about the sport itself and the manner in which it should be undertaken. This paper explores these anxieties within the social context of second wave feminism and related shifts in gender norms, and the sporting context of British amateur rowing in the late 1960s and the early 1970s.