Showing posts from category: Gender wars
The Trojan War Tale in the Epic Cyclic Poems: Homeric and Post-Homeric
Movies based on the story of The Iliad as told by its traditionally reputed author Homer—such as the 2004 Troy, Helen of Troy (both the 1956 movie and the 2003 mini-series) and The Trojan Horse (1961)—automatically include scenes concerning the artifice of the Trojan Horse and the sack of Troy, conveying an impression that these events were part of the Homeric epic poem on Troy. but in reality they do not feature in The Iliad at all, which concludes with the funeral of Troy’s champion warrior Hector. Homer in fact alludes to the Trojan Horse episode all up only thrice in the “follow-up” epic poem The Odyssey and then only briefly in passing.
Epic Cycle ~ it was left to other ancient authors, some roughly contemporaneous with Homer and some later, to, as it were, fill in the gaps in the popular tale of the Trojan War between the end of Homer’s Iliad and the Odyssey. This collection of non-Homeric verse in dactylic hexameter acquired the name of Epic Cycle (Epikòs Kýklos), and exist today only in fragments and as later summaries made in Late Antiquity and the Byzantine period.
Aethiopis ~ this lost epic poem (c.776BC), comprising five books, is attributed to Arctinus of Miletus. Arctinus spices up the Trojan conflict by introducing two new allies of the Trojans into the story. First Penthesilea and her band of fierce Amazon bellatrixes (women warriors) from Thrace enter the fray against the Achaeans (Greeks). The Amazonian Queen more than holds her own against the men, cutting a sway through many of the Greek warriors until Achilles bests her in hand-to-hand combat and kills her…creating something of a double-edged sword for himself as in the act of killing Penthesilea he makes the unsettling realisation that he is in love with her (real Freudian messing with your head stuff this!) Arctinus then brings in Memnon, king of Aethiopia➀ (Ethiopia) and his vast army to bolster the besieged Trojan side. Memnon is deemed almost equal in martial skills to Achilles and the two über-warriors and demigods square off in mortal combat. After a titanic struggle Achilles kills the Aethiopian warrior-king which causes his army to flee in terror. A fired-up Achilles launches an attack on the Trojans but gets too close to the city walls, giving the initiator of all the troubles, Paris (whose behaviour is consistently dishonourable and cowardly), a chance to take a pot shot. Paris’ arrow pierces Achilles’ heel, the only vulnerable spot on his otherwise immortal body, but Paris still gets no credit for it it is Apollo (god of archery) who guides the trajectory of the arrow truly to its target➁.
Ilias Mikra (“Little Iliad”) ~ this lost epic, in 4 books, is mainly attributed to the semi-legendary Lesches➂ (of Lesbos(?), flourished 700–650BC). Lesches covers the conception and construction of Odysseus’ Trojan Horse➃ and the awarding of the dead Achilles’ arms to Odysseus over Ajax, prompting the latter to lose the plot altogether, attack a herd of oxen and commit suicide in shame. The rest of the Little Iliad follows various escapades mostly involving Odysseus who treks off around the Aegean in company with Diomedes, collecting sacred objects which the Achaean prophecies decree are the preconditions necessary for Troy to be conquered. One such adventure takes them in disguise behind the enemy’s walls to steal, with Helen’s help, the Palladium (an archaic cult image said to preserve the safety of Troy).
Iliou persis➄ (“The Sack of Troy”) ~ the surviving fragments of this epic, comprising just two books, is usually attributed to Arctinus, giving it a comparable vintage to the Aethiopis. The verse opens with the Trojans discovering the “gift” of the Wooden Horse. After debating it the citizens fatefully ignore the warnings of the prophetess Cassandra and Laocoön and decide to dedicate the horse to Athena as a sacred object. After the Trojans drunkenly celebrate their supposed triumph through the night the Greek traitor Sinon signals to the Achaean fleet to return, Odysseus and the other warriors disembark from the wooden horse and wholesale carnage, destruction and slaughter spells the end for Troy and its citizens.
The Aeneid ~ this part of the story is also covered in later surviving versions by the Roman poet Virgil in his Aeneid and by Quintus Smyrnaeus (of Smyrna). Virgil’s Aeneid (12 books, written between 29 and 19BC) focuses on one of the minor participants of the Trojan War mentioned in the Iliad, a Trojan hero named Aeneas who escapes from Troy with his supporters (the Aeneads) before the Wooden Horse ruse is executed. Homer provides the template for Virgil’s epic poem which follows Aeneas and Co on their circuitous wanderings and adventures around the Aegean and Mediterranean seas (including an excursion to the Underworld) in Odysseyesque fashion, before settling in Italy and becoming progenitors of the Romans.
Posthomerica ~ Quintus Smyrnaeus’ Posthomerica (14 books, written 3rd–4th century AD) picks up the story from the end of the Iliad and continue the narration of the war. Quintus modelled his work on Homer’s and also drew heavily on material from the Cyclic poems of Arctinus and Lesches, revisiting the well-trawled landscape of the capture of Troy through the Wooden Horse, the eradication of Troy’s royal family, including the killing of King Priam by Neoptolemus (Achillles’ son) in a sacred temple and his bestial murder of Hector’s infant son, violations for which the gods punish the returning Greeks with a series of misadventures – eg, Menelaus is delayed from leaving the Troad and driven off-course by storms and winds, taking seven or eight years to get back to his kingdom in Sparta; his brother King Agamemnon, the commander-in-chief of the Achaean expedition, is murdered immediately upon his return to Mycenae➅.
➀ some sources refer to it as Scythiopia
➁ none of this gets a mention in the Homeric poems
➂ also attributed to other ancient writers like Cinaethon of Sparta and Thestorides of Phocaea
➃ or should we say Epeius’ Trojan Horse as it was he who built the gigantic equine decoy in rapid-quick time
➄ as in Ilion or Ilium, the Greeks’ name for Troy
➅ and of course there’s the curse of Odysseus’ decade-long tortuous trek trying to return to his home island Ithaca, as recounted in the Odyssey
A Female Helicopter Trailblazer, the “Whirly Girls” and the Struggle for a Place in the Cockpit: Women in the ‘Contrails’ of Modern Aviation
When the first men managed through repeated trial-and-error to get manned “flying machines” off the ground, the first women pioneers weren’t that far behind them in getting into the skies. The first woman got her flying licence (Elise Deroche in France) less than nine years after the Wright brothers made their epic 59-second ‘hop’ – see the 2017 brace of articles elsewhere on this blogsite, Equality at 10,000 Feet: The Pioneer Aviatrix in the Golden Age of Aviation – Part I (May 27, 2017) and Part II (May 31, 2017).
Baroness Derouche (Source: This Day in Aviation)
While many women overcame obstacles on the way to a career as an aviatrix, those of their sex wanting to become helicopter pilots have found it even more difficult and onerous. The prospects around 1940 when the world’s first modern rotary-wing copter became fully functional looked bright enough for women. Nazi Germany’s pioneering aviatrix Hanna Reitsch was leading the way. In 1938 Reitsch☸ became the first woman to test fly a helicopter, Focke’s FW-61 helicopter, even going on to set a distance record for helicopter flight of 109km. She followed that up with the record (shared with another pilot) for being the first in the world to fly a copter in an enclosed space❇ (Sophie Jackson, Hitler’s Heroine, Hanna Reitsch (2014)).
Unfortunately, as the industry has grown since those formative days, female helicopter pilots trying to follow the trajectory of Reitsch’s stellar achievements in the air have found it much harder to penetrate the masculine preserve of the helicopter world. Today women still lag far behind in the gender stakes, in 2019 according to the Civil Aviation Authority women made up only 4.5% of the helicopter pilots in the UK, with just the single female instructor-examiner for the whole country (“International Women’s Day: ‘I’m teaching other women to fly helicopters’”, BBC, 08-Mar-2019, www.bbc.com).
(Photo: Stephanie Wallace/IMdiversity)The statistics are hardly more encouraging in the US. The Helicopter Association International puts the number of female pilots at around 5%, the FAA (Federal Aviation Administration) which pointedly has no specific data on women helicopter pilots estimates the figure at a perhaps generous 7.9%. (‘How These 2 Women Became The Helicopter Pilot and Reporter Inside Skyeye’, ABC13, 11-Mar-2021, www.abc13.com). Even more concerning, the percentage of women behind the controls has been stagnant over recent decades✴.
But it’s not from the lack of trying to effect change on the part of women aviators! The barriers to female entry into both the commercial and military fields of helicopters led pilot Jean Ross Howard Phelan (above), the 8th US woman to gain her helicopter accreditation, to form Whirly Girls International in 1955—an association dedicated to the advancement of women in helicopter aviation—with just 12 other charter members🈂. Today the group has 72,000 members from 44 countries.
The minuscule inroads made by women inside the sanctum of the “male cockpit” isn’t confined to rotary-wing aircraft. Women pilots have barely had more success in cracking the fixed-wing aircraft industry, their share of the jobs in the US has hovered somewhere between five and six-and-a-half percent. Despite all the efforts of women’s aviation bodies including the Ninety-Nines (the Whirly Girls’ “older sister” organisation) to make headway in rectifying the imbalance, women today constitute just 7% of the world’s certified pilots for all types of aircraft (‘Female Helicopter Pilots on The Rise’, Claire McCann, Prestige Helicopters, Inc., Upd.11-Nov-2020, www.prestigehelicopters.com).
Women in Aviation International: best strategy, targeting girls at a young age to foster the ‘bug’ for a flying careerThe reasons flying has continued to be a male stronghold are many and varied. With so few women pilots—only 13 credentialed to fly helicopters by 1955—young women and girls have been bereft of visible role models and mentors to show the way. At school-level not enough effort have been made to make teenage girls aware of the opportunities there are in a flying career. The preponderance of male pilots perpetuates the “highly masculine image of aviation“, reinforcing the stereotype that the profession is “not a woman’s job” (Why There Aren’t More Female Pilots’, Katherine LaGrave, IMdiversity 08-Mar-2018, www.imdiversity.com). This in part comes back to a prevailing mentality of “Top Gun” chauvinism. Female pilots have commented on aviation still being an “old boys’ club” and the lack of support, bias and intimidation they experienced from men in the industry during their training (‘Chances Are Your Pilot Isn’t a Woman. Here’s Why’, Kimberly Perkins, Seattle Business, (nd), www.seattlebusinessmag.com). The issue of unhelpful male pilots for some women has led to another road block, the paucity of female instructors in the industry.
Once in the industry some women pilots have found themselves facing static career paths, the sheer lack of opportunities to attain seniority has eventually led a number of women in military and commercial aviation to prematurely leave the profession. Another criticism of the aviation industry is that it hasn’t embraced the change in work rules and conditions that other industries have…getting the work/life balance right is an issue of more importance to women who usually have to bear the brunt of child-rearing activities (‘Why are there so few women in aviation?’, Kathryn Creedy, CNN, 20-Nov-2019, www.cnn.com).
Research suggests the prohibitive costs involved can be a barrier for women. Aircraft training in the US can cost up to US$150,000, add to this the soaring price of purchasing an entry-level commercial plane today…the (adjusted) price of buying a new Cessna 172 is four times greater than it was in 1960 (‘Why Are There So Few Female Pilots?, Rebecca Maksel, Air and Space, 06-Feb-2015, www.airspacemag.com).
What makes the persistence of multiple barriers and obstacles blocking women from realising their professional pilot dreams maddeningly vexatious is the dilemma now facing the industry as a whole, a looming worldwide shortage of qualified pilots to take the reins of the big airliners. Some airlines like United in the US recently have flagged the introduction of quotas to increase pilot numbers for women and for minorities, but much more fundamental structural change is required before we see real progress in tackling the gender imbalance.
(Photo: PPRuNe Forums)▪▬▫▬▪▬▫▬▪▬▫▬▪▬▫▬▪▬▫▬▪▬▫▬▪▬▫▬▪
☸ having already been appointed a flugkapitän (flight captain), a position till then exclusively reserved for male German pilots
❇ later Reitsch was also the first woman to fly a rocket plane
✴ numbers in the US did initially rise from the 1960s to the 1980s but have plateaued since that point (Maksel)
🈂 member #1 was appropriately enough Hanna Reitsch
Wonder Woman’s Oscillating History in Comics
After Wonder Woman’s creator Bill Marston dies in 1947, Robert Kanigher takes over the writing duties, the first of many subsequent writers to take on pop culture’s most famous female superhero. DC Comics wastes little time in ringing the changes with Wonder Woman, both to her physical appearance and to her abilities, disposition and purpose.
There are several reasons for the change. One motive is simply commercial, Wonder Woman like her male superhero counterparts, experiences a fall-off in popularity after the war. Another relates to expectations of gender roles in America. So much of America’s manhood is away during the world war on the front line engaging the enemy. Born of necessity, American women move into the work force, invading traditional male domains of employment as never before. With the war’s end, men return to their jobs relegating thousands of women back to unpaid work in the home. There is a re-solidifying of the traditional gender roles. A casualty of this is Wonder Woman herself. In Marston’s hands she reflects empowerment, ie, freedom from male domination. The feminist overtones she embodies are a challenge as the US attempts to re-establish the status quo ante order [‘The Fitful Evolution of Wonder Woman’s Look’, (Diana Martinez), The Atlantic, 07-Jun-2017, www.theatlantic.com].
Superhero Nazi hunters Wonder Woman’s superhuman exertions and physicality—as with everyone else in the superhero comic universe—have an aptness during WWII. The superheroes in the comics spearhead the fight against the Nazis, promoting a patriotic agenda and helping to boost morale. When the war is won, this agenda loses its relevance for the American readership [‘Women of Comics: Objectified, Sexualize and Disempowered’, (Nia Aiysha), Wild Black Orchids, 07-May-2016, www.wildblackorchids.wordpress.com].
Making the iconic feminist warrior a bit less super In wanting to rein in Wonder Woman’s powerful persona DC Comics are responding to prevailing (male) society’s anxieties about women’s independence. By 1950, the toning down is well underway, WW’s crime-fighting exploits are taking second fiddle – in Sensation Comics #97 she is the editor of a newspaper lonely hearts column❋. During the decade WW becomes a reluctant superheroine, love-struck and longing to settle down with her beau Steve Trevor [‘Publication history of Wonder Woman’, Wikipedia, http://en.m.wikipedia.org; Wonder Woman Unbound: The Curious History of the World’s Most Famous Heroine, Tim Hanley (2014)].
Wonder Woman is not just a feminist, she’s also a sexy feminist! Accordingly, there is a lot of scrutiny on her salacious attire as well by the “morally self-appointed” in society. Eventually, the raunchy bathing suit and sexually-confident red boots will be traded in for a more demure look. Psychologist Fredric Wertham’s full-on crusade against the deleterious effects of comics on children in the early 1950s includes WW in its cross-hairs. WW’s sexually provocative bondage fetish (involving herself or other females) leads Wertham to ‘blacklist’ the depicted character as a promoter of lesbianism (which he took as evidence of misandry)(Martinez), pressuring DC Comics to remove Marston’s message of WW as a harbinger of matriarchy (Hanley).
The Amazonian princess returns to ‘civies’ – “Emma Peeled”
In the 1960s other comic book action heroines come forward such as secret agent Modesty Blaise. Reflecting the early rumblings of what would evolve into the second wave feminism of the Seventies, Blaise exhibits Wonder Woman-like “badass fighting capabilities” to triumph in a male world. At this time however WW loses that same original verve✪, getting a Sixties ‘mod’ makeover which transforms her into an Emma Peel clone (from the cult British TV series The Avengers), complete with martial arts moves, jumpsuits and Carnaby Street attire〥 [‘Four-Colour Yesteryears: Wonder Woman – the Emma Peel Years’, (Rob N), Paradox Comics Group, 22-Aug-2009, www.paradoxcomicsgroup.com; Hanley].
1970s, the women’s movement and empowerment Gloria Steinem and the burgeoning women’s movement comes into the story at this time. Steinem, dismayed at DC Comics’ relegation of Wonder Woman to a “powerless 1950s car hop”, lobbies DC to restore WW’s superheroine stature. Steinem puts WW on the cover of the first edition of Ms. magazine in 1972, tagging it “Wonder Woman for President”. [‘How Gloria Steinem Saved Wonder Woman’, (Yohana Desta), Vanity Fair, 10-Oct-2017, www.vanityfair.com]. WW in Ms. becomes a kind of masthead to promote sisterhood and equality among women (the magazine depicts WW confronting store owners who deny their female employees equal pay and defending abortion clinics against male thugs [‘How A Magazine Cover From The 1970s Helped Wonder Woman Win Over Feminists’, (Katie Kilkenny), Pacific Standard, 21-Jun-2017, www.psmag.com]. Steinem and Ms.’ agitation on behalf of WW forces DC to restore her special powers including the “Lasso of Truth” and re-draw her in her original voluptuous form.
With the critical spotlight turned on DC’s portrayal of Wonder Woman, DC made further concessions to the comic. Diversity was introduced —a nod to the Black Power Movement in the US and perhaps belated recognition of a lack of ethnic diversity in its comics—with the inclusion of Nubia, WW’s African half-sister (Martinez). The perception of Wonder Woman as a feminist icon is given a further boost along by the cult success of the 1975-79 television series. WW, played by Lynda Carter, embodies the qualities of strength, fearlessness, wisdom and determination, restored in the comics post-1972✧.
PostScript: The Wonder Woman comic books over the past 40 years has seen the WW character and image undergo sundry transitions, a procession of “conflicting and seemingly incompatible versions” of WW – alternating between ramped-up raunchiness and less overt sexuality, between a muscular Amazonian physicality and a “heroin chic” fashion model (Martinez).
◦ ∘ ◦ ∘ ◦ ∘ ◦ ∘ ◦ ∘ ◦ ∘ ◦ ∘ ◦ ∘ ◦ ∘ ◦ ∘ ◦ ∘ ◦ ∘ ◦ ∘ ◦ ∘ ◦ ∘ ◦ ∘
❋ in other Fifties comics Wonder Woman or her alter ego Diana Prince appears as a model and a film star
〥 WW becomes younger and thinner too. She also gets labelled as a “female James Bond” during this period
✪ DC Comics’s hegemony in the superhero comic popularity stakes in the late Sixties is seriously being challenged by Marvel Comics, a factor in the decision to revamp WW along with the entire ‘stable’ (Rob N)
✧ subsequent interpretations of Wonder Woman on the screen follow, the most recent in 2017 (with a sequel slated for release this year) sees WW reconnect with her Amazonian roots
Wondrous Origins of Wonder Woman
In a way the Wonder Woman story starts in Medford, Massachusetts, at Tufts University, in the 1920s. William M Marston, a young progressive and unorthodox psychology professor, teaches his own DISC theory＊ to his students. One particular female student takes a shine to Marston’s DISC ideas and to the professor himself. Next thing we know Marston immerses himself in a ménage a trios with the student (Olive Bryant) and his (initially quite reluctant) wife Elizabeth. The polyamorous relationship◵ allows Bill to explore a latent interest in BSDM and arrive at the conclusion that women are the “love leaders” of society, predicting that women would “take over the rule of the country, politically and economically, within the next hundered years” [Tim Hanley, Wonder Woman Unbound: The Curious History of the World’s Most Famous Heroine, (2014)].
(Source: www.money.org/)
⍋ 1st sighting of the pioneering super-heroine: Marston uses the pseudonym “Charles Moulton” for the Wonder Woman comic books
Marston over the years tries his hand at many things in addition to psychology —inventing a systolic blood pressure test (which contributes to the development of the polygraph); writing screenplays for early silent films; authoring self-help books—without ever really attaining a measure of lasting success in any. Marston’s venture into creating comic books in 1940 turns that trend around. Always looking for a new business opportunity, especially after finding himself on the outer in academe, Marston finds a new way to champion his faith in female superiority by creating Wonder Woman, the first super-heroine in comics.
⍒ Wonder Woman on the lie detector
Marston’s ‘superwoman’ Having successfully pitched the idea to DC Comics boss Max Gaines, Marston’s Wonder Woman debuts in 1941 in All Star Comics #8, with cartoonist HG Peter supplying the pencilling which have a touch of art nouveau about it. Marston embodies WW with all the attributes and values that added up to his idea of perfect femininity (based seemingly on an amalgam of the brace of women in his life, Elizabeth and Olive). The make-up of WW’s character reflects Marston’s fascination with Greek mythology. She is depicted as an Amazonian princess◘ , as “strong as Hercules”, “wise as Athena” and “beautiful as Aphrodite”. Garbed in a sexy but patriotic suit of star-spangled red, white and blue, her accoutrements are distinctively martially potent – including the “Lasso of Truth”, a device to compel people to tell the truth (an idea germinating from Marston’s lie detector prototype). WW wears indestructible bracelets which deflect bullets, a golden tiara which doubles as a projectile and an ‘invisible’ jet to whisk herself away from danger [Wonder Woman Psychology: Lassoing the Truth, edited by Travis Langley & Mara Wood (2018)].
Wonder Woman, a comic book gender transgressor In the comics of the 1930s prevailing cultural norms are reinforced, superheroes are male by gender and violent in method – the stereotypical depiction of women was commonly restricted to evil seductresses, the girlfriends of heroes (eg, Lois Lane) or their ‘helpmates’. Wonder Woman represents a radical departure from the norm, her shtick is fighting fascism in America wherever she finds it – using her brains rather than the heavy-handed brawn exhibited by Batman, Superman and co. [‘A Psychologist and A Superhero’, (Margarita Tartakovsky), Psychology Central, updated 15-Mar-2019, www.psychcentral.com].
Wonder Woman, “deer-hunting” ⍋
Comic bondage and a moral backlash
Marston is able to indulge one of his most cherished psychosexual beliefs through Wonder Woman, that “women enjoyed being bound”. In the comics it appears as a standard contrivance, we find WW being tied up by villains as some point or other in the story line. Sometimes WW herself ties up women, and to accentuate the kinkiness of her character, dresses them in deer costumes for a mock cervid hunt through the forest⁌ [‘Wonder Woman (comic book)’, Wikipedia, http://en.m.wikipedia.org]. The BSDM preoccupation reflects a personal fetish of Marston’s but also can be linked back to the powerful influence the suffrage, feminist and birth control movements has on him (pioneering birth control activist Margaret Sanger was Olive Byrne’s aunt) ⌖. Wonder Wonder is an instant hit for the comic book-reading public (eventually reaching a weekly readership of five million), drawing the opprobrium of America’s moral guardians who object to the torture motif running through the stories, also considering WW’s outfit to be far too skimpy [‘The Surprising Origin Story of Wonder Woman’, (Jill Lepore), Smithsonian Magazine, October 2014, www.smithsonianmag.com].
⍒ Justice Society of America
At DC Comics Wonder Woman is invited to join the Justice Society of America (DC’s superhero team in the “Golden Age of Comic Books” as the period was known). WW’s elevation is hardly a step forward for gender advancement however as her designated role in the JSA is that of secretary for the male superheroes, while the ‘boys’ get on with the heroics of protecting the world from the designs of global criminal masterminds [‘The Truth About Wonder Woman’, Robert Kirkman’s Secret History Of Comics, (US documentary)].
Marston doesn’t get to appreciate the success of Wonder Woman for long, he contracts a form of cancer and dies in 1947, still in his early fifties (for the last two to three years he has an assistant, Joye Hummel, who helps ghost-write the WW stories when he is too ill). With the reins of the Wonder Woman comics passing from its originator to new hands, the iconic super-heroine’s persona and fortunes would undergo a number of transformations over the decades to follow. Initial sketch of WW by HG Peter (1941) ⍒ (Source: Smithsonian Libraries)
︵︵︵︵︵︵︵︵︵︵︵︵︵︵︵︵︵︵︵︵︵︵︵︵︵︵︵︵︵︵
＊ Marston believes that the behavioural expression of emotions could be divided into four primary types – Dominance, Inducement, Submission and Compliance [‘William Marston’, www.discprofile.com/]
◵ Elizabeth and Olive each have two children to Bill and everyone live under the same roof
◘ like Superman, Batman, etc, WW has a civilian alias – Diana Prince
⁌ such scenes may also have inspired by Byrne giving Marston a window into the activities of her sorority at Tufts University – “baby parties” where dominatrix women bind and discipline submissive sorority members [‘Curious Traditions of Times Past: Baby Parties’, (Yim Walsh), Tufts, 18-Sep-2014, www.dca.tufts.edu]
⌖ from this exposure Marston learns that the breaking of chains is “a powerful feminist symbol of emancipation” [‘A look back at Wonder Woman’s feminist (and not-so-feminist) History, (Michael Cavna), Independent, 30-May-2017, www.independent.co.uk].
♋️ ♋️ ♋️
The FA and the 1921 Ban on Women’s Football: The ‘World Game’ – “Quite Unsuitable for Females”
Britain’s sporting lingua franca has by general consensus long been football (better known as ‘soccer’ in Australasia and the United States). For the bulk of the 19th century the “round-ball game” was exclusively the domain of men, but by the 1890s women in Britain were embracing the popular outdoor pastime with passion. Women’s clubs, many based in North London, were formed at this time, beginning with the British Ladies’ Football Club (BLFC), comprising mostly middle-class women (see Footnote).
Working class women discover football What really kicked the sport along for women however was World War I. The escalating demand on manpower to feed the war effort depleted the country’s vital industrial factories of its male blue-collar workers. The same priority had a similar draining effect on the (English) FA’s (Football Association’s) player stocks. The manpower shortages took women in large numbers out of the home to meet the factory shortfall of men. With few men around to play the game, after season 1914/1915 the premier men’s competitions, the FA Cup and the English championship, were suspended and didn’t get going again until 1919/1920. Into this breach, almost by a process of natural evolution, stepped the newly employed (working class) women of England’s factories ‘FA History’, www.thefa.com].
Dick, Kerr’s Ladies FC
With the new infusion of working women taking up football competitively, the stronghold of women’s football moved to Preston in the north-eastern county of Lancashire. Over the next several seasons up until the early years of the interwar period, one women’s club team stood tallest…Dick, Kerr’s Ladies was created out of the female workforce of Dick, Kerr & Co, Preston locomotive and tramcar manufacturers. The highly successful Dick, Kerr’s Ladies side was spearheaded by one of football’s most remarkable ever female players, the chain-smoking, openly gay Lily Parr who scored over 1,000 goals in a 31-year career✱.
Dick, Kerr’s Ladies were pioneers of international women’s matches with French women’s sides⍟ and the Preston team’s popularity soared through and beyond the war years. In 1920 a game between Dick, Kerr’s and St Helens’ Ladies at Goodison Park (Everton) drew a crowd of 53,000 – with the gates locked leaving thousands more outside! [‘WW1: why was women’s football banned in 1921?’, (Gemma Fay), BBC News, 12-Dec-2014, www,bbc.com].
Notwithstanding the enormous contribution of Lily Parr, Dick, Kerr’s Ladies was no “one woman band”…centre-forward Florrie Redford netted a phenomenal 170 goals for the Preston-based club in 1921 [Dick, Kerr Ladies FC 1917-1965′, www.dickkerrladies.com]. Another female football star of the day – who DIDN’T play for Dick, Kerr’s XI – was Northumberland’s Bella Reay who played in the north-east Munitions’ comp. Bella’s 130-plus goals in the 1917/1918 season propelled her unbeaten club Blyth Spartans Ladies FC to victory in the Munitionettes’ Cup (drawn from women workers in munitions factories and docks in the north-east who played amateur football to raise funds for charity) [Fay, ‘BBC’, loc.cit.].
Bella Reay, Blyth Spartans star striker ⬆️
The (FA) empire strikes back
Immediately following the Great War the women’s game was at a high point and on the ascent✥. But after demobilisation, able-bodied men who had fought in the global conflict, streamed back into the English workforce…this meant that the great bulk of the women who had filled their boots on the factory floor were now surplus to requirements and so were “quietly shunted back into domestic life” [ibid.]. Englishmen also returned to playing the number one sport with the Football League recommencing in 1919/1920. The FA authorities in England had tolerated rather than supported women’s football during the enforced absence of the men’s league.
Football – a “health hazard” for women! The FA’s disapproval had an ally in some prominent members of the medical profession which shared its lack of enthusiasm for female football – on medical grounds!◘ These medicos tended to endorse the assumption of Harley Street specialist Dr Mary Scharlieb who opined that football was a “most unsuitable game, too much for a women’s physical frame” [ibid.]. At this point (1921) the FA stepped in, banning women and the country’s female competitions from using FA grounds, echoing the (predominantly male) medicos’ sentiments that the sport was “quite unsuitable for females, and ought not to be encouraged” [‘The FA’, op.cit.]. Aiming for overkill, the FA decreed that its officials (referees and linesmen) could not take part in women’s matches, a step intended to further hamper the development of the female game.
To underscore the justification for its arbitrary and discriminatory treatment of the women’s’ leagues, the FA alleged (without any proof) that the women’s setup had failed to give an adequate percentage of its gate revenue towards charitable objects”. This was a classic double standard posture as the men’s clubs was never asked to donate any gate receipts to charity. In response, the captain of the Plymouth Ladies team accurately described the FA as being “a hundred years behind the times”✫ and said the ban was nothing more than “purely sex prejudice” [‘1921: the year when football banned women’, History Extra, (Jim Weeks), Dec. 2017, www.historyextra.com].
So was the FA simply exhibiting a blatant, sexist chauvinism towards the women players? The short answer is yes…but could there be something else behind their draconian action as well? During the war the women’s leagues had built up a considerable following and were enticing impressive crowd numbers to the matches. The FA’s overwhelming remit has always been the health of the men’s game and it was concerned that the women’s demonstrable pulling power might have a detrimental affect on attendances to the Football League (men’s) games [ibid.]. Applying a handbrake to the burgeoning women’s game, indeed sidelining it altogether, was considered a great ‘leg-up’ boosting the FA’s objective of rebuilding men’s professional football after the WWI hiatus.
Aftermath of the ban The FA’s ruling did not put an end to women and girls playing football altogether, but the effect of it was to relegate the top-tier players in England to mostly friendly matches. The elite Dick, Kerr’s Ladies team (later renamed Preston Ladies FC) did its best to stay active. In 1922 it organised a tour of North America but even here the meddling hand of the English FA was at work doing what it could to stymie the club’s tour. On direction from the FA the Canadian FA banned the Dick Kerr women from playing in Canada. The team did however manage to organise nine matches in the US which were played against men’s sides [ibid.].
Preston Ladies, 1939 ➡
“Fem-soccer”: Women’s football goes “gangbusters!”
The ban stayed in force…beyond the formation of the Women’s FA in England in 1969. It was not until July 1971 that the FA, and then only under pressure from UEFA (Union of European Football Associations), finally lifted the ban. Held back no more by gender stereotypers, the women’s game has gone from strength to strength – in 1972 the first women’s FA Cup, in 1984 the first women’s European Championship, followed by the World Cup in 1991 (the 2011 World Cup Final was played in front of a packed 83,000-strong crowd).
Footnote: “Nettie Honeyball” The founding of the first women’s team British Ladies’ FC is attributed to ‘Nettie Honeyball’…this was a pseudonym for the middle-class female activist (identity unknown, possibly one Mary Hutson) who organised the first women’s match in North London in 1895 (“The North” thrashed “The South” 7-1 before an estimated 11,000 spectators) [‘British Ladies’ Football Club’], Wikipedia, http://en.m.wikipedia.org].
PostScript: The Scottish FA, closed ranks with its English brethren The FA in England was not “Robinson Crusoe” among the home countries in enforcing discriminatory practices against women players. Other football associations took a similarly blinkered view. In the 1924/1925 season three Scottish clubs (Aberdeen, Queen of the South and Raith Rovers) all had their requests to use their club grounds for women’s matches uncermoniously vetoed by the men of the Scottish FA [‘The Honeyballers: Women who fought to play football’, BBC News, 26-Sep-2013, www.bbc.com].
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✱ in 2002, many years after her death, Parr was the first (and so far only) woman player inaugurated into the FA’s Hall of Fame
⍟ although there had been a much earlier women’s match between a Scottish XI side and an English XI that took place in 1881
✥ in 1920 there was around 150 women’s teams playing the sport in England plus many more in Scotland and Wales
◘ back as far as 1894 medical professionals had advocated that women and girls be barred from taking part in football [‘The Honeyballers’, loc.cit.]. Aside from “medical concerns”, another reason that has been suggested for the opposition to female footballers at the time was that they were seen as threatening the perception of football as a “masculine game” [Mårtensson, S, ‘Branding women’s football in a field of hegemonic masculinity’, Entertainment and Sports Law, 8 (June 2010)].
✫ 8.4M British women had recently received the vote, the breakthrough achievements of women’s football was paralleling the Suffrage Movement [Weeks, op.cit.]