Paper Presentation X:
Gender and Participation in Sport
Monday, April 12, 10.00–13.00

David Berry & Jeremy Crump
UK

In the new sport of lawn tennis in late 19th Century Britain, there was considerable pressure for women’s tennis to develop separately from men. Using an analysis of over 80 histories of lawn tennis clubs in Britain, as well as contemporary accounts in the press and instructional manuals, this paper examines why this did not happen, why women became active members of many mixed tennis clubs in the late 1880s, playing in tournaments with men and organising teams not just making the tea. By the turn of the century, it was a matter of course for women to participate in British lawn tennis on a relatively equal level to men, even if full equality wouldn’t be granted till well into the 20th Century.

Six reasons are examined for this. British lawn tennis had a crucial role as a courtship aide for the new aspirant middle class and an ideal format for that to happen: mixed doubles. Tennis also became an individual sport for the kinds of professional men (called ‘sissies’ by cricketers) who didn’t otherwise play sport, vicars, lawyers, teachers, and who were more open to sharing power with women. Third, as tennis became a popular spectator sport it was clear that women players were more of an economic draw then the men. Fourth, women were much better than men at policing the new lawn tennis clubs interpreting the developing etiquette of the game and excluding undesirable members. Fifth, the new sport would quickly become one teenagers could excel at. When Maud Watson and then Lottie Dod won Wimbledon in their mid-teens, their loose clothing and short skirts were not seen as scandalous because they were girls. Finally the new women players won the political and ideological battle against male separatists who argued that women could not cope with the athletic or moral demands of tennis. Elite women champions like Dod easily held their own against most male players on court and fiercely argued their case in print. And at the recreational level, women fought hard to gain not just full membership but court space and equal resources in the new tennis clubs that spread across Britain. This battle against separation became a symbol of women’s emancipation running parallel with demands for equality in public life, education and the economy.