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In the fall of 1913 Bessie Huntting Rudd entered Radcliffe College, the coordinate institution of all-male Harvard University, and enrolled in courses taught by professors from both Radcliffe and Harvard. Rudd competed in varsity basketball and field hockey at Radcliffe until her graduation in 1917, earned a health and physical education certificate at Wellesley College, and went on to a distinguished career as a physical education instructor and administrator. She served from 1930 to 1961 as director of physical education at Pembroke College, then the women’s coordinate college of Brown University, where the programs that she developed made athletic participation widely available through instruction, intramurals, and intercollegiate athletics.

Beginning in her years as a student-athlete, Rudd was thus among a handful of women who initiated sports for women in Ivy institutions, before widespread coeducation and the start of formal Ivy League athletic competition for women, and indeed before the establishment of the Ivy League itself. She exemplified the efforts of generations of pioneers who brought increased athletic opportunities to women of the mid-century, as higher education slowly became more open to women.

The efforts of Bessie Hunting Rudd, and of many others, established a tradition of excellence that became the basis for dramatic changes in the 1970s. Before those changes occurred, however, many other issues had to be resolved — both nationally and in the Ivy League — from the advisability of women’s education generally to the effects of exercise on women's bodies, from the status of women in society to the contrasts between meanings of sport for women and for men.


Only in the last decades of the 20th century has athletics been accepted as a contribution, rather than a detriment, to women’s health and social standing, and only in this time have women athletes been considered role models deserving admiration rather than objects of curiosity. A significant contribution to that evolution in thought in the United States occurred with the growth of women’s athletics in American colleges and universities, and the development and institutionalization of women’s athletics in turn has been closely tied to the general evolution of women’s education.

For most of history, women have been thought of as mentally inferior to men, or at least subordinate to them: a position exemplified by “scientific” claims that women’s brains were smaller than men’s and that women’s reproductive capabilities — their traditionally most valued attribute — would be harmed by too much thinking.

But along with the 18th-century Enlightenment concept that individuals possessed reason, and thus the possibility of moral improvement, came the notion that children should be taught to become rational adults who would contribute to their societies. And with that concept came the related, gradual acceptance of some education for women because of their role as children’s primary caregivers.

Nevertheless, social strictures against women as anything other than wives and mothers were so strong before the 20th century that even advocates of women’s education had to couch their arguments in terms of what historian Sara Evans calls “republican motherhood.” Fulfilling women’s domestic responsibilities was defined as a service to the country — that is, their civic duty — and education for women thus was useful specifically to help them become better mothers and homemakers.

This justification was sufficient for the founding by men of “female academies” in the 1780s and eventually, by the early 19th century, to the establishment by women of “female seminaries,” which were innovative in offering curricula similar to those at contemporary men’s colleges. A primary function of these seminaries was to educate women to become teachers, a role seen as a natural extension of their traditional responsibility for children. Educating women as teachers also was encouraged by school boards, which quickly learned that they could hire women at only one-third or one-half the salary they otherwise would pay to men. Even so, teaching and nursing, another care-giving profession, offered American women their first real options for supporting themselves, and thus for delaying marriage or even not marrying if they chose. Eleven thousand women were enrolled in American higher education in 1870; by 1880, the number had increased to 40,000.

Part of the lifestyle of this new, more educated, more independent woman was an interest in sport. Late 19th century women, largely of the wealthier classes, played croquet, tennis, and golf and rode horses. Magazines of the 1890s portrayed the popular “Gibson girl” playing mild forms of tennis and golf and riding a bicycle in spite of her long skirts. The bicycle became a favorite vehicle and symbol of independence during this period, enabling women from all social classes to travel on their own and to dress in attire that enabled them to move more freely.

Women also began playing basketball, a sport that encouraged not only exercise but teamwork. Smith College physical educator Senda Berenson introduced the game to American women in 1892 because she felt that, with the increasing opportunities available, they would need “the physical strength to meet these ever increasing demands.” Among college basketball players of the time was Alice Paul, who played at Swarthmore College and after graduating in 1902 earned a doctorate in sociology at the University of Pennsylvania and founded the National Women’s Party, which was instrumental in gaining the right to vote for women in 1920.

Anne O’Hagen, writing in Munsey’s Magazine in 1901, summed up the meaning of women’s participation in sports: With the single exception of the improvement of legal status of women, their entrance into the realm of sports is the most cheering thing that has happened to them in the century just past. . . . The revolution means as much psychologically as it did physically.

By the early part of the 20th century, most women’s colleges and some coeducational institutions offered instruction and intercollegiate competition, through departments of physical education, in such sports as archery, baseball, basketball, rowing, tennis, and track. Yet the surge of support for competitive women’s athletics began to wane by the mid-1920s, a backlash to the era of the newly independent woman. An emphasis on romantic love as the basis for marriage, rather than practicality, arose along with a new focus on female charm and sexuality (evidenced most clearly in the founding of the Miss America beauty pageant). Many educators and parents began to express fears that participating in athletic competition could make young women “mannish,” too strong to be acceptable wives, and — especially subsequent to the so-called “hysterical collapse” of women runners after the 800-meter race at the 1928 Olympics — susceptible to health risks. In 1925, the National Association of Secondary Principals condemned the “extremely strenuous physical and mental exertion and strain” in girls’ sports as a “menace” and warned that “sooner or later, the spectacle of interscholastic contests among girls gives rise to undesirable and even morbid social influences.”

In the face of these challenges, collegiate women physical educators sought a compromise acknowledging that harm could come from “overdoing it,” but claiming that women students could safely participate in moderate athletics if carefully supervised by people with appropriate standards — that is, by women physical educators. The professional association passed a resolution discouraging women’s participation in intercollegiate competition and in the Olympics, opposing travel by women to any sporting events, and condemning the “commercializing” of women’s sports through collecting gate receipts and publicity. Instead, they advocated sport “for the joy of playing,” instruction for all students rather than gifted ones only, and close attention to health and safety considerations.

As a result, intercollegiate schedules were replaced in many colleges from the 1930s through the 1960s by play days and sports days. Though definitions varied, play days generally were one-day contests in which girls from several schools would gather at one school to play with rather than against each other, organized into groups that included teammates from different schools. In a sports day, by contrast, students competed against each other on school teams, though sport days also were primarily social in purpose. Typically, either type of day would end with food and entertainment. “Meets” sometimes were even held with no travel: students in swimming, track and field, and archery would “compete” on their own campus, then compare the results by telephone with those of students on another campus.

The scope of women’s participation in mid-century is impossible to estimate, as no organization collected data, though one survey found that 50 to 60 percent of four-year colleges had some type of extramural competition for women, mostly in the form of play or sport days. Another approved form of women’s athletic participation was intramural competition, in which teams from various classes, dormitories, sororities, or other clubs competed against each other. The goal again was fun and socializing among the broadest possible group of students, with little or no emphasis on training or competition.

Primary emphasis also was placed during this period on the so-called “ladylike” sports of badminton, golf, swimming, and tennis, as more intense team sports such as basketball, softball, and volleyball were discouraged. Avery Brundage, an American who was president of the International Olympic Committee, reflected this attitude in recommending a reduction in the number of women’s Olympic track and field events in the late 1940s and mid-1950s, arguing that women had too many events and seeking to eliminate those he considered “not truly feminine,” such as the shot-put and distance runs. At the same time, the Amateur Athletic Union also prohibited girls and women from running a distance of more than 200 meters in competition.