"An Age of Progress": Did Sport Inspire Women's Suffrage? by Ben Jones
Two Swansea Univeristy history graduates and football historians - @Benny_J + @GJ_Thomas track how sport has helped lead to a new found sense of freedom for women and chance to express themselves like never before.
The subject of gender in sport is always one of interest, but also one which is vital to understand as it highlights just what prejudice and negativity women overcame in order to achieve general equality. It is worth remembering that it wasn't until 1918 that women were granted the right to vote in the United Kingdom following the suffragette movement and the First World War. In the past we have written about the rise of women's football between 1914 & 1918 and the way it brought females to the forefront of sport and recreation attracting attendances of over 60,000 people.
This piece, however, is one for The Sporting History Boys. Over the next few paragraphs we will see just how the new multitude of sports available helped lead to a new found sense of freedom for women and chance to express them like never before. The sporting revolution was born out of a growing need for what J.A. Mangan describes as a muscular Christianity. Following military defeat in Crimea and an increasingly ungentlemanly and unchristian public school system with codified sport offering a chance to reintroduce these principles.[1] But of course this still excludes women - so where do they fit in?
