A short history of sexism in sport

Antiquity and the Middle Ages

There’s no such thing as sport as we know it today: sport is training for war. And war isn’t for chicks. In most cases, women are excluded from athletic activities (and their participation can be punishable by death, no less).

The modern era (1800-1960)

In the ideology of muscular Christianity, men were urged to train in preparation for future battles. This marked the birth of the first Federations and the return of the Olympic Games, which… Of course, they excluded women and did everything in their power to restrict their practice, banning them from certain sports and from taking part in competitions, this time for hygienic reasons: women risked their health and modesty by moving around too much.

Contemporary period (1980-Nowadays)

Sport enters the home with programs like Gym Tonic. If women are invited to take up sport, it’s above all to satisfy aesthetic criteria and market logic: the sportswoman becomes a marketing object.

The diktats of thinness add to patriarchal oppressions: catastrophic media treatment, sexualization of female athletes, abysmal pay inequality, and above all extremely gendered sporting practices…

Sportswomen who changed history

The feminist struggle and sport go back a long way, as the stories of these 2 women who enabled women to have the right to run marathons (and even to run at all) prove:

A little background

Our story begins in the 60s. Back then :

• The marathon is extremely popular: the public is fascinated by the discipline and the runners are adored, but women are not allowed to take part.
• However, we don’t run outside dedicated training areas: it’s very frowned upon, and runners who indulge in such practices are often stopped by the police. The federations are extremely sexist, and it’s difficult for women to get into them.
• Medicine still maintains that sport is dangerous for women: it defends the risk of “defeminization” (loss of uterus, breasts, development of hair growth, and even DEATH).

Bobbi Gibb : Starting line

And so the story of Bobbi Gibb begins. Bobbi was born in Boston in 1942 and ran with her father in the 1940s-1950s. In 1964, she supported him in the Boston Marathon, and that’s when it all clicked.

Except that, because she’s a woman, she can’t join a club or register for a marathon.

So she decides to train on her own , with a simple plan: to run a little longer every day. Tired of being stopped by the cops, she decides to train in the forest and hires a minibus for her vacation, just to vary the scenery.

She ended up running 60 kilometers, and wrote a letter to the director of the Boston Marathon, who replied:“Women are physiologically incapable of running 40 kilometers.

From then on, his participation in the Boston Marathon became a political act.

Supported by her mother, who identifies with her fight, but not by her father (the reversal), Bobbi slips into a bush next to the starting line.

Before long, the men around her realize she’s a woman, but encourage her and pledge their support: Bobbi takes off her sweater, revealing that she’s a woman, and then… The crowd response is HUGE.

Bobbi finished in 3:27, ahead of 2/3 of the men in the race. Bobbi trained alone in the forest, while the men were supervised by coaches…

The media reception is very positive, but...the race is not open to women.

Kathrine Switzer: Taking over

Kathrine Switzer was born in 1947 and started running to join the field hockey team.

Her love of running began there, and because she was so strong and motivated, her coach had her compete with the boys in a 1-mile race in 1966. This experience gave her a boost: competing with the boys was great fun.

She continued her studies at Syracuse University in New York and asked to train with the boys. Except that…

But Kathrine is stubborn. And she won’t give up.

In the end, a compromise was reached: Arnie Briggs was put in charge of training him.

He’s 60 years old, preparing for the Boston Marathon during his rounds as a letter carrier, and that’s when Kathrine’s life really takes off.

But Arnie doesn’t want to train Kathrine for the marathon, so she has to prove to him that she can do it.

The marathon is in 3 months, Arnie prepares an ultra concrete program to test her and BIM, Kathrine manages to run 50kms and Arnie agrees to train her.

Except that… The marathon is still closed to women. So they used a loophole in the system: in those days, it seemed so obvious that women couldn’t compete that gender wasn’t asked for on the entry form. So Kathrine puts her initials in place of her first name and BIM she’s entered.

On April 19, 1967, Kathrine was on the starting line of the Boston Marathon, bib 261. It’s super-cold, the conditions are Dantean, it’s raining and it’s VERY cold, so Kathrine, accompanied by Arnie and Tom Miller (her boyfriend), has a good chance of going unnoticed.

Except that… For some reason, that year, the busload of journalists went up the course instead of ahead. They’re going to spot Kathrine VERY QUICKLY, and her presence does NOT at all provoke the same craze as Bobbi’s (for the record, this is a year after Bobbi’s race, and she, too, is present but won’t be spotted). Jock Semple(real name John), the race director, pounces on Kathrine and tries to rip off her bib.

This is the photo of that precise moment with Arnie trying to protect Kathrine: Jock is the man in the suit behind her.

Tom manages to clear Jock with a shoulder blow, and Arnie who yells at Kathrine to run as fast and as far away as possible. Kathrine complies, but the media bus doesn’t let her go and continues to behave extremely aggressively.

The audience is also very mixed, with women giving their full support and men shouting at Kathrine to “go home and make her husband something to eat”.

After the race, things don’t get any better, as Kathrine is DEZINGUERED by the press and banned for life from the U.S. Track & Field Federation. All this makes Kathrine extremely angry. That day, she decides 2 things:

• To finish this race come what may, which she did that year in 4 hours 20 minutes.
• Campaigning for the marathon to be opened up to women was to become her life’s work.

Kathrine began a career as a professional sportswoman, to prove that women could run. At the same time, she is campaigning for women’s marathon running to be allowed into the Olympic Games. For this to happen, the sport had to be represented in 23 countries and 3 continents. In 1978, Kathrine gave up her athletic career and formed a partnership with AVON (a cosmetics company) to organize women-only races around the world.

These races were a huge success and, in 1980, Kathrine delivered the fatal blow to the ban on women’s marathon running in the Olympics. In London, where the Olympic Committee was meeting, she organized a huge marathon to raise the profile of her fight (and put the pressure on).

In 1984, the women’s marathon was included for the first time, with Kathrine commentating on the race. In 1972, the Boston Marathon director had to wait 5 years before allowing women on the starting line, in response to the growing number of women.

Today, the Boston Marathon counts more women than men among its participants. In 2006, Bobbi’s victories in 1966, ’67 and ’68 were recognized by the race organization. And since 2017 the latter has removed the number 261 from its bibs in tribute to Kathrine.

The last word

So what can we learn from these incredible stories? That representation is really important.

Without Bobbi, there would be no Kathrine, and without them, no women’s marathon at the Olympics. But this story isn’t just about two women, two isolated figures. It’s also the story of all those anonymous women who also slipped onto the starting line. Who fought, spoke out, campaigned.

And it’s also the story of the men who listened to them and supported them. Struggles are never solitary stories. Every gesture counts.