Playing With the Boys: Why Separate is Not Equal in Sports

by Eileen McDonagh, Laura Pappano

Overview

Athletic contests help define what we mean in America by "success." By keeping women from "playing with the boys" on the false assumption that they are inherently inferior, society relegates them to second-class citizens. In this forcefully argued book, Eileen McDonagh and Laura Pappano show in vivid detail how women have been unfairly excluded from participating in sports on an equal footing with men. Using dozens of powerful examples--girls and women breaking through in football, ice hockey, wrestling, and baseball, to name just a few--the authors show that sex differences are not sufficient to warrant exclusion in most sports, that success entails more than brute strength, and that sex segregation in sports does not simply reflect sex differences, but actively constructs and reinforces stereotypes about sex differences. For instance, women's bodies give them a physiological advantage in endurance sports, yet many Olympic events have shorter races for women than men, thereby camouflaging rather than revealing women's strengths.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780199840595
Publisher:	Oxford University Press
Publication date:	10/25/2007
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
File size:	4 MB

About the Author

Eileen McDonagh is Professor of Political Science at Northeastern University and Visiting Scholar at the Institute for Quantitative Social Science at Harvard University. She is the author of Breaking the Abortion Deadlock and The Motherless State. Laura Pappano is an award-winning journalist whose work has appeared in The New York Times, The Boston Globe Magazine, Good Housekeeping, and The Washington Post. She is the author of The Connection Gap and is currently a writer-in-residence at the Wellesley Centers for Women at Wellesley College.

Table of Contents

Preface Acknowledgments 1. What's the Problem 2. The Sex Difference Question 3. Title IX: Old Norms in New Forms 4. Sex Segregated Sports on Trial 5. Inventing Barriers 6. Breaking Barriers 7. Pass the Ball Notes Index

Editorial Reviews

"Playing with the Boys dismantles the common assumption that women must be inferior to men when it comes to sports. McDonagh and Pappano impressively show how this deep stereotype has no grounds and why it's so important we get rid of it."—Donna Brazile, author of Cooking with Grease: Stirring the Pots in American Politics

"This is one of those rare gems of a book that makes you entirely reassess what you thought you knew. Provocative, absorbing and meticulously argued, Playing with the Boys questions the received wisdom about Title IX and women's sports from the most unexpected perspective. Read the book."—Mary Fainsod Katzenstein, Stephen and Evalyn Milman Professor of American Studies, Cornell University and author of Faithful and Fearless: Moving Feminist Protest inside the Church and Military

"McDonagh and Pappano hit a home-run! This book shows that coerced sex segregation in sports does not benefit women, and in fact holds back women who are fully capable of competing with men—and that flies in the face of U.S. ideals of equality. Readers will never think of Title IX in the same way again."—Kim Gandy, President, National Organization for Women (NOW)

"A strong case history about the inequalities that existed for female athletes not only in the 1800s and 1900s, but also today."—The Chicago Sun-Times

"Makes a dynamic case for reshuffling our gendered assumptions about sports."—Bust Magazine

"Start thinking about the issues they raise and you may never stop."—The New York Times

"This exhaustively researched, historically informed book represents an important step in the debate surrounding gender equity in sport." —Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society

From the Publisher