Playing Nice and Losing: The Struggle for Control of Womens Intercollegiate Athletics, 1960-2000 (Sports and Entertainment) by Ying Wushanley

For nearly a century, women physical educators kept an iron-fist control of womens intercollegiate athletics within the sex-separate spheres of college campuses and under an educational model of competition. According to the author, Ying Wushanley, that control began to loosen significantly when Congress passed Title IX of the Education Amendments in 1972. Title IX meant greater opportunities for women in educational activities, including intercollegiate athletics. Ten years after the passage of the law, however, women not only gave up their educational model but also lost their power and control of womens intercollegiate athletics. Playing Nice and Losing looks into the evolution of womens intercollegiate athletics from a historical perspective and examines the demise of the Association for Intercollegiate Athletics for Women (AIAW). Five major themes emerge: the movement from protectionism to sex-separation of womens college sports; the ascendance of womens sports as a result of the Cold War and power struggle within U. S. amateur sports; the challenge to the sex-separatist philosophy; the NCAA takeover and bankruptcy of the AIAW; and the defeat of the AIAW as a defender of the separate but equal doctrine. With Title IX and formerly mens organizations entering the governance of womens intercollegiate athletics, sustaining the sex-separatist AIAW became untenable in American society.

Author: Ying Wushanley

Language: English

Binding: Hardcover

Pages: 244

Publisher: Syracuse University Press

Publication Date: 2004-04-01