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Women-in-Hockey Digest     Friday, October 2 1998     Volume 01 : Number 288



In this issue:

   Re: Question for you...

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Date: Thu, 01 Oct 1998 08:22:01 -0400
From: Louise 
Subject: Re: Question for you...

At 08:58 PM 9/30/98 -0500, Deanna Manson wrote:
>Question for you all (somebody in the house is doing a paper for a
>Sociology of Sport course):
>
><and success of womens hockey in Canada?>>

This question isn't just asking about what the effects are in 1998, is it?  

I think the decrease in popular support for women's sports in the years
right after the Second World War is probably directly related to the social
perception of femininity at that time.  Etue and Williams' book (which I
recommend highly, by the way - reference at the end) cites Helen Lenskyj on
this, and Brian McFarlane's book calls the chapter on this era "When the
stickhandling stopped".  My mother recalls that in her childhood (the 40's
I guess, maybe early 50's?), most little girls who skated used the same
hand-me-down skates as their brothers, i.e. hockey skates, until the figure
skater Barbara Ann Scott caught the national imagination.  Suddenly, it
became imperative that little girls should all wear *white* skates,
preferably figure skates, even for fun skating on a pond.  

In my own recollections, I am thinking about the attempts in my own
home-town and others to get municipal ice time, players, and general
credibility for female hockey in the mid 1970's.  Our attempts were most
definitely frustrated by the common perception that hockey was not a "nice"
pastime for "normal" girls.  The town recreation department employees had
this attitude; so did most parents of girls, many of our elected officials,
and a majority of my early-teenage peers.  Most women's teams and
tournaments in those days called themselves "Ladies' '' teams and
tournaments, and two of the popular tournaments were named the "Lipstick"
tournament and the "Sweetheart" tournament - attempts to show that hockey
players fit the feminine mores of the day?

Perhaps the strong feelings in that era were to some extent a backlash
against the social changes hinted at by the rise of the women's movement
(report of the Royal Commission on the Status of Women, start of Ms.
magazine, etc)?  People who were afraid of too-rapid change in society,
tried to control the behaviour of their daughters, wives, neighbours, by
emphasising the "unfeminine" or "abnormal" attitude towards strong women
doing unusual things?  Homophobia used as a tool to manipulate women?  

>If so, how?  We have a couple of ideas: financial support for feeder
>systems to the highest level and for high-level players seeking 
>endorsements - is the money there for only "feminine-looking"
>players?  Is the issue of feminine appearance in sport a limiting factor 
>for government support through agencies such as Sport Canada?

If "femininity" were not still an important issue to many people, then
people who write and talk about women's sport wouldn't still be trying to
"redefine" femininity or to demonstrate that "despite everything", the
athletes care about "normal" feminine values.  An article in Chatelaine
last year about the national team (sorry, i don't have the citation - it
might have been January) talked about Cassie Campbell having done some
modeling as a teenager, and reported that one reason Shannon Miller always
wore black was that it was "slimming".  

I would be very interested in reading this paper when it is done.  Would
you ask the author if she/he would consider sending it to me or putting it
on a web site?  

Louise

references:
Elizabeth Etue. Megan K. Williams, "On The Edge:  Women Making Hockey
History", Second Story Press, Toronto, 1996
Brian McFarlane, "Proud Past, Bright Future:  One Hundred Years of Canadian
Women's Hockey", Stoddart Publishing, Toronto, 1994.

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End of Women-in-Hockey Digest V1 #288
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