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

by Laura Pappano (Contributor), Eileen McDonagh (Author)

New
Illustrated
2009
$18.08

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.

Synopsis

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.

$18.08

Quantity

10 in stock

More Information

Format: Illustrated
Pages: 384
Edition: Illustrated
Publisher: Oxford University Press, U.S.A.
Published: 10 Jul 2009
ISBN 10: 0195386779
ISBN 13: 9780195386776

Media Reviews

'Makes a dynamic case for reshuffling our gendered
assumptions about sports.'-Bust
'Convincingly argue[s] the notion that sports, like
politics, higher education, and employment generally, should
provide equal opportunity for women... Marshaling facts,
research, and opinions from biology, history, sociology,
law, media, and psychology, the authors make their feminist
argument more plausibly than does Colette Dowling in The
Frailty Myth... Highly recommended.'-Library Journal

Author Bio

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.