Female Gladiators: Gender, Law, and Contact Sport in America (Sport and Society) - Softcover

Fields, Sarah K.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0252075846 ISBN 13: 9780252075841

Publisher: University of Illinois Press, 2008

Synopsis

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.

About this title

Product Description:

Hard to find

Review:

"Professor Fields makes a fresh and excellent contribution to the literature by suggesting that the intensity of opposition to female football and baseball players was not simply--as is conventional wisdom--a somewhat quaint paternalistic protection of the 'weaker sex, ' but rather due to the role of these major sports in promoting the American construct of masculinity and the desire to save these sports as a male 'preserve' as gender roles are deconstructed."

About this edition

• Publisher: University of Illinois Press
• Publication date: 2008
• ISBN 10: 0252075846
• ISBN 13: 9780252075841
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 232