No abstract

Motorsport is an under-researched area of socio-historical study. There is particularly limited academic understanding of female involvement in the social world of motorsports. Therefore, this article focuses on the role of the media in presenting and establishing motorsport for women. In particular, a documentary analysis of articles published by a UK national newspaper group from 1890, and a case study of an all-female UK-based motorracing championship are used to account for gendered processes that have influenced attitudes and behaviours toward women motor racers. The motor car emerged through technological progress in an overtly masculine-dominated industrial period. Traditional assumptions and biologically-deterministic attitudes toward women were used by men to position motoring and motor-racing as a male preserve. Newspaper reporting throughout the 1930s suggests an era of heightened success for women motor racers as a result of gaining access to a key resource in the form of Brooklands motor-racing circuit. Following the Second World War, there was increasing commercialisation and professionalisation of maledominated motorsport, as well as renewed marginalisation and trivialisation of female participants within the newspapers. These processes continue to influence perceptions of women in contemporary motorsport.

No abstract

The topic of women and girls' rights, access and inclusion in sport and physical activity has 5 become a mainstay of sporting and non-sporting organisational discourse. Notwithstanding, 6 there is little published on why, how and who enabled these topics to become politicised to this 7 extent. For example, academic texts state key moments for the advancement of women and 8 sport, such as conferences and resolutions, but rarely provide further detail. By explaining how 9 transnational women and sport advocacy groups lobbied the United Nations (UN) and the 10 International Olympic Committee (IOC) into actions for women and sport in the mid-1990s, 11 this article adds to knowledge about how advocacy groups in international sport succeeded in 12 working together to collectively effect change despite demonstrating contention amongst one 13 another. Data from archival analysis of papers and correspondence of key agents involved in 14 these processes were complemented with semi-structured interviews with some of the same 15 individuals decades later. Using terms and concepts from social movement studies, the article 16 shows how the International Working Group on Women and Sport (IWG) and WomenSport 17 International (WSI) developed in relation to each other and the political environment in which 18 they were playing a key role in shaping. Their relationship was not straightforward, due in part 19 to the formations and structure of each group, but their purposive efforts with other agents 20 contributed to a collective endeavour that achieved milestones for the political legitimacy of 21 women and sport.

No abstract