BiblioVault - Books about Sports for women

Built To Win: The Female Athlete As Cultural Icon
Leslie Heywood
University of Minnesota Press, 2003
Library of Congress GV709.18.U6H49 2003 | Dewey Decimal 796.082

A timely look at the rise of women in sports. The sculpted speed of Marion Jones. The grit and agility of Mia Hamm. The slam-dunk style of Lisa Leslie. The skill and finesse of these sports figures are widely admired, no longer causing the puzzlement and discomfort directed toward earlier generations of athletic women. Built to Win explores this relatively recent phenomenon-the confident, empowered female athletes found everywhere in American popular culture. Leslie Heywood and Shari L. Dworkin examine the role of female athletes through interviews with elementary- and high school-age girls and boys; careful readings of ad campaigns by Nike, Reebok, and others; discussions of movies like Fight Club and Girlfight; and explorations of their own sports experiences. They ask: what, if any, dissonance is there between popular images and the actual experiences of these athletes? Do these images really "redefine femininity" and contribute to a greater inclusion of all women in sport? Are sexualized images of these women damaging their quest to be taken seriously? Do they inspire young boys to respect and admire female athletes, and will this ultimately make a difference in the ways gender and power are constructed and perceived? Proposing a paradigm shift from second- to third-wave feminism, Heywood and Dworkin argue that, in the years since the passage of Title IX, gender stereotypes have been destabilized in profound ways, and they assert that female athletes and their imagery are doing important cultural work to that end. Important, refreshing, and engrossing, Built to Win examines sport in all its complexity. "Built to Win describes a new world--a world where I've always been able to express myself through competition, through my involvement in sport. And though that world still has a long way to go, that world has made my life and my teammates' lives very different from the generations that came before us. We've had the opportunity to play in front of 94,000 screaming fans. We have our own professional leagues. Men in our generation don't assume they're going to be the achievers and we're just going to be their cheerleaders. Built to Win shows the difference this makes--about how far we've come and how far we have left to go." from the foreword by Julie Foudy Leslie Heywood is professor of English at Binghamton University. She is the author of Pretty Good for a Girl: An Athlete's Story (2000), Bodymakers (1998), and coeditor of Third Wave Agenda (1997). A former track and cross-country runner who is currently a competitive powerlifter, Heywood is a vice president of the Women's Sports Foundation. Shari L. Dworkin is a sociologist and works as a research fellow at the HIV Center for Clinical and Behavioral Studies at Columbia University. She was a recent guest editor for a special issue on gender and sport in Sociological Perspectives and serves on the editorial board of Gender and Society.

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Coming On Strong: Gender and Sexuality in Women's Sport
Susan K. Cahn
University of Illinois Press, 2015
Library of Congress GV709.C34 2015 | Dewey Decimal 796.082

Acclaimed since its original publication, Coming on Strong has become a much-cited touchstone in scholarship on women and sports. In this new edition, Susan K. Cahn updates her detailed history of women's sport and the struggles over gender, sexuality, race, class, and policy that have often defined it. A new chapter explores the impact of Title IX and how the opportunities and interest in sports it helped create reshaped women's lives even as the legislation itself came under sustained attack.

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Equal Play: Title IX and Social Change
Nancy Hogshead-Makar
Temple University Press, 2007
Library of Congress KF4166.E68 2007 | Dewey Decimal 796.082

One of the least understood issues in federal sports policy, Title IX of the Educational Amendments of 1972 reflects the nation's aspirational belief that girls and boys, women and men, deserve equal educational opportunities in athletics. Equal Play shows how this ideal has been implemented -- and thwarted -- by actions in every branch of the federal government.

This reader addresses issues in sports before Title IX and the backlash that has resulted from the policy being instituted. The editors have collected the best scholarly writing on the landmark events of the last four decades and couple these with new original essays, primary documents from court cases, administrative regulations, and relevant supporting sources. The result is the most comprehensive single-volume work on the subject.

Equal Play includes essays by many well-known sports journalists who discuss how government actions have shaped, supported, and hindered the goal of gender equality in school athletics. They discuss the history of women in sports, analyze the meaning of "equal opportunity" for female athletes, and examine shifts in arguments for and against Title IX. Equal Play will interest anyone who is concerned with gender issues in American athletics and the growth of college sports.

Contributors include: Susan Cahn, Donna de Varona, Julie Foudy, Jessica Gavora, Bil Gilbert, Christine Grant, Mariah Burton Nelson, Gary R. Roberts, Don Sabo, Larry Schwartz, Michael Sokolove, Welch Suggs, Nancy Williamson, and the editors.

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Female Gladiators: Gender, Law, and Contact Sport in America
Sarah K. Fields
University of Illinois Press, 2004
Library of Congress GV709.18.U6F54 2005 | Dewey Decimal 796.0820973

Female Gladiators examines the legal and social history of the right of women to participate with men in contact sports. The impetus to begin legal proceedings was the 1972 enactment of Title IX, which prohibited discrimination in educational settings, but it was the Equal Protection Clause of the U.S. Constitution and the equal rights amendments of state constitutions that ultimately opened doors. Despite court rulings, however, many in American society resisted--and continue to resist--allowing girls in dugouts and other spaces traditionally defined as male territories. When the leagues continued to bar girls simply because they were not boys, the girls went to court. Sarah K. Fields examines the legal and cultural conflicts over gender and contact sports that continue to rage today.

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Ice ’n’ Go: Score in Sports and Life
Jenny Moshak with Debby Schriver
University of Tennessee Press, 2013
Library of Congress GV691.U58M67 2013 | Dewey Decimal 796.0430976885

The 1972 passage of Title IX, the federal law that prohibits sex discrimination

in education, was a gamechanger for women and girls in athletics. in the forty years since the law was enacted, participation in sports—especially of girls and women—has grown dramatically. With that growth have come challenges. in Ice-n-Go: A Perspective on Sports and Life, Jenny Moshak, celebrated trainer of the legendary lady Vols basketball team and associate athletic director for sports medicine at the university of tennessee, Knoxville, reflects on the role of sports in society and addresses the high stakes and costs of winning in sports today.

<i>Ice-n-Go</i> is a culmination of the breadth of knowledge and unique insight from Moshak’s more than twenty-five years of work in major college sports. in this highly readable new book, she covers social issues, medical concerns, motiva- tional techniques, gender roles and expectations, the impact of sports on our children, and how the body works, heals, and recovers. though she writes on serious subjects in a serious way, Moshak’s tone is always upbeat and positive with surprisingly simple strategies for improving the athletic experience for all, especially kids.

An outstanding athlete herself, she shares lessons learned on her own demanding coast-to-coast bicycle ride across the united states. in sharing her stories, sound advice and fresh ideas, Moshak seeks to do for us what she has always done for the players in her care: to help protect, nurture, and grow the athlete who is in each one of us.

Jenny Moshak is the celebrated trainer of the legendary Lady Vols basketball team and associate athletic director for sports medicine at the university of Tennessee, Knoxville. a frequent speaker at workshops and conferences across the country, Moshak is an adjunct professor in the exercise science department at the university of tennessee. the U.S.A. Olympic Committee cited Moshak for “Outstanding athletic training support” at the United States Olympic Festival.

Now retired from the university of tennessee, Knoxville, Debby Schriver was the first woman to be elected president of the national Orientation directors association. she is the author of In the Footsteps of Champions: The University of Tennessee Lady Volunteers, the First Three Decades.

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No Slam Dunk: Gender, Sport and the Unevenness of Social Change
Cooky, Cheryl
Rutgers University Press, 2018
Library of Congress GV706.32.C665 2018 | Dewey Decimal 306.483

In just a few decades, sport has undergone a radical gender transformation. However, Cheryl Cooky and Michael A. Messner suggest that the progress toward gender equity in sports is far from complete. The continuing barriers to full and equal participation for young people, the far lower pay for most elite-level women athletes, and the continuing dearth of fair and equal media coverage all underline how much still has yet to change before we see gender equality in sports.

The chapters in No Slam Dunk show that is this not simply a story of an “unfinished revolution.” Rather, they contend, it is simplistic optimism to assume that we are currently nearing the conclusion of a story of linear progress that ends with a certain future of equality and justice. This book provides important theoretical and empirical insights into the contemporary world of sports to help explain the unevenness of social change and how, despite significant progress, gender equality in sports has been “No Slam Dunk.”

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Qualifying Times: Points of Change in U.S. Women's Sport
Jaime Schultz
University of Illinois Press, 2014
Library of Congress GV709.18.U6S38 2014 | Dewey Decimal 796.082

This perceptive, lively study explores U.S. women's sport through historical "points of change": particular products or trends that dramatically influenced both women's participation in sport and cultural responses to women athletes.

Beginning with the seemingly innocent ponytail, the subject of the Introduction, scholar Jaime Schultz challenges the reader to look at the historical and sociological significance of now-common items such as sports bras and tampons and ideas such as sex testing and competitive cheerleading. Tennis wear, tampons, and sports bras all facilitated women’s participation in physical culture, while physical educators, the aesthetic fitness movement, and Title IX encouraged women to challenge (or confront) policy, financial, and cultural obstacles.

While some of these points of change increased women's physical freedom and sporting participation, they also posed challenges. Tampons encouraged menstrual shame, sex testing (a tool never used with male athletes) perpetuated narrowly-defined cultural norms of femininity, and the late-twentieth-century aesthetic fitness movement fed into an unrealistic beauty ideal.

Ultimately, Schultz finds that U.S. women's sport has progressed significantly but ambivalently. Although participation in sports is no longer uncommon for girls and women, Schultz argues that these "points of change" have contributed to a complex matrix of gender differentiation that marks the female athletic body as different than--as less than--the male body, despite the advantages it may confer.

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