Women in Professional Sport

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Women in Professional Sport

• A Brief History and Contemporary Challenges

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I. Early Professional Sport for Women

• Tennis offered one of the earliest opportunities
• --Charles Cash and Carry Pyle
• Women and professional rodeo
• --Tad Lucas
• Women and professional golf
• --LPGA (1949)

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II. The All-American Girls Professional Baseball
League

• First night game played at Wrigley Field 1943
  womens all-star game
  
• Founder Philip K. Wrigley
• Adapting the popular sport of womens softball

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II. The AAGPBL (cont.)

• Wrigleys Management Team
• --Branch Rickey
• The Search for Ballparks
• Original four teams South Bend Blue Sox,
  Rockford Peaches, Racine Belles, Kenosha Comets
  
• Hybrid of softball and baseball played

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II. The AAGPBL (cont.)

• Search for players
• The distinctive design of player uniforms
• Spring Training practice by day, Charm School at
  night
  
• Rules of Conduct
• Player chaperones

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II. The AAGPBL (cont.)

• Womens Professional Baseball game evolved over
  time
  
• Unique challenges for team managers
• Experimenting with Womens Baseball in Major
  League Parks
  
• --Minneapolis Millerettes and Milwaukee Chicks

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II. The AAGPBL (cont.)

• Wrigley sells the League to Arthur Meyerhoff in
  1944
  
• Over one million in attendance in 1948
• Women players as good as men?
• The downfall of the League by 1954
• Fort Wayne Daisies dominated the League in final
  years

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III. Individual Womens Sports Pioneers

• Sonja Henie
• Esther Williams
• Strictly speaking, neither woman engaged in
  professional sport they participated in athletic
  exhibitions, not competitions
  
• Babe Didrikson
• --AP Female Athlete of the Year six times

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IV. The Era of Growth

• 1960s and 1970s were pivotal periods in the
  growth of womens professional sports
  
• Prize money in golf and tennis grew dramatically
  in the 1970s

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IV. The Era of Growth (cont.)

• Gains of earlier years solidified in 1980s and
  1990s
  
• --Monica Seles earned 6 million in 1998 in
  endorsements
  
• Creation of a viable womens professional
  basketball league
  
• --First WNBA game in Los Angeles in June of 1997

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V. The Present Status of Womens Professional
Sports

• Still enormous disparity between the magnitude of
  mens and womens professional sport
  
• Women underrepresented in administrative posts in
  professional sport

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V. Present Status (cont.)

• Continuing ambivalence about gender roles, if not
  outright sexism
  
• 1999 U.S. Womens Soccer team wins World Cup
• No pay increase for team players despite their
  victory