Throw Like a Girl, Cheer Like a Boy. Robyn Ryle

when all cheerleaders were male, most women were playing their own sports, even if many of them weren’t allowed to get too competitive. At the same time, there were concerns that if girls started cheerleading, they would become manly and conceited. So what changed? The simple answer is that World War II brought about a rapid transformation in cheerleading. As it did for many areas of social life, World War II altered the relationship between gender and sports, and this wasn’t only because women flooded into cheerleading to take the place of men fighting overseas, though this did happen in some places.

      During the war, colleges scaled back on all extracurricular activities that weren’t seen as essential, which included sports programs for women. A 1943 survey found that most colleges had either eliminated or reduced their women’s sports programs. As a result, some women became cheerleaders to fill the gap left by men fighting overseas.^[13] But women were also looking for a physical activity to take the place of their disappearing sports programs.^[14] Cheerleading became a convenient way for women accustomed to being physically active to maintain that lifestyle.

      With increasing numbers of women leading the cheers from the sidelines, the meaning of cheerleading changed. Cheerleading couldn’t be considered an inherently masculine activity anymore if it was being done mostly by women. It also wouldn’t be seen as a first step in a successful and ambitious career beyond college, as it had been for men. Cheerleading became viewed as a much less important activity when women filled its ranks. When women led cheers, it wasn’t a reflection of their leadership skills and athleticism. In fact, much of the athleticism that had been associated with cheerleading disappeared. Instead, cheerleading was increasingly sexualized. Descriptions of cheerleaders emphasized their appearance and attractiveness rather than their voice or ability to perform stunts. Cheerleaders were pretty and sexy, not future leaders and captains of industry.^[15]

      Outside the sporting world, the gender switch in cheerleading mirrors what happened in many occupational fields. The occupation we now call “secretary” used to be done by “clerks,” who were all men. Clerks were certainly not expected to be cheerful and attractive, like proxy wives in an office setting. But when women began doing the same tasks clerks had once done, the job of secretary emphasized these feminine qualities. When most teachers in the United States were men, their authority and knowledge were seen as important qualities of the job. As women took over, nurturing and compassion became important characteristics for teaching.

      It only took a couple of decades for cheerleading to completely switch into an activity seen as overwhelmingly and inarguably feminine. By the 1950s, cheerleading was no longer a prestigious, masculine domain. For a young woman, becoming a cheerleader was a surefire way to demonstrate the ideal form of femininity—pretty, nonathletic, and largely an accessory to men’s activities.

      Boys Over Here and Girls Over There

      The history of cheerleading may be unique in the world of sports in terms of the speed in which an activity achieved a complete and total reversal of gender expectations. It’s hard to find another sport that has gone from being considered as manly as the football quarterback to about as girly as it gets in just a few decades. Ironically, today’s cheerleading resembles the original version of the activity, even if it’s mostly women who are involved. In some places, cheerleading has become a very competitive and athletically demanding sport. It is also one of the few sporting activities in which women and men compete together on a team.

      We live in a world where most sports are gender-segregated, the number of sports that aren’t can be counted on one hand. Sports where women and men do compete together include NASCAR racing, thoroughbred horse racing, equestrian events, and mixed doubles tennis. Across the rest of the sports world, organizations patrol a hard line between women and men. This line can be especially harmful to transgender and intersex athletes, topics which we’ll explore more in chapters 2 and 4.

      Even with the increasing numbers of openly transgender athletes, the gender segregation of sports remains a largely taken-for-granted fact of life. Before the women’s movement in places like the United States, many men and women moved through a world that was highly gender-segregated across social spheres, so the gender separation we see in sports today didn’t seem strange. But if you take a moment to think about how deeply gender-integrated most areas of our lives are today, you might wonder, what’s so special about sports? Women and men go to school together and work together across almost all professions. They work out together in gyms and belong to many of the same clubs and organizations. There are very few areas of social life that remain gender-segregated. So why do we still insist that we can’t step onto the field or the court together in a way not organized by gender?

      There are some specific situations in which women and men play sports together. Many colleges and universities have co-ed intramural leagues. In some community leagues, women and men may play together. What these situations have in common is that the main purpose of playing is recreational. That isn’t to say that some intramural games on college campuses don’t get competitive, but in theory, people are playing just for the fun of it. When nothing serious is at stake, it’s okay for girls and boys or women and men to play together.

      Even in these gender-integrated situations, rules are put in place to make sure that gender-integrated sports remain “fair,” and those rules are based on incorrect assumptions about gender. For example, in a co-ed basketball league, rules will probably require that at least two women be on the court at all times. The underlying assumption is that a team with four men and one woman would have an unfair advantage, because the men would be better athletes. We’ll talk about prevailing assumptions regarding gender and athletic performance in chapter 3, but for now, it’s fairly easy to see that although some men may be better basketball players than some women, there are also quite a few women who are better basketball players than some men. For example, a top player from the Women’s National Basketball Association (WNBA) would easily be able to beat an average amateur male basketball player. If you had two WNBA players on your team, you’d probably have an unfair advantage over most teams made up of five amateur men. These specific rules about what gender-integrated sports look like make sense only if you assume that every single man is a better athlete than every single woman, and that’s simply not the case.

      The Cold War and Women’s Competition

      The idea that competition was bad for women in sports began to change after World War II, and that happened in part because of the Cold War. This sustained political hostility that existed between the United States and the Soviet Union throughout the second half of the twentieth century created increased competition at many levels around the globe. Which country could boast the greatest economic prosperity? Which country could get to the moon first? Which country could win the most medals at the Olympic Games? This last competition dictated that women in the United States step up their sports game. The previous era, with its emphasis on cooperative play days, gradually disappeared in favor of programs that could produce elite female athletes—athletes who could show the Soviet Union and other Communist countries the inherent superiority of American democracy. Women’s sports became more competitive in order to help the United States win the Cold War by accumulating as many Olympic medals as possible.^[16]

      In the same time period, women also started participating in a small number of professional sports. The Ladies Professional Golf Association (LPGA) was founded in 1950, making it the oldest women’s professional sports league still in existence.^[17] Made famous by the movie, A League of Their Own, the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League was created in 1943. The league was meant to fill the void in the baseball world left by the many men who were serving overseas. The league lasted until 1954, when a lack of audience and financial struggles forced the AAGPBL to shut down.^[18]

      Women would play golf and baseball professionally in a gender-segregated environment, but in the world of Formula One motorsports, women raced alongside men. Maria Teresa de Fillipis competed in Formula One racing in 1958–1959.^[19] In the National Association of Stock Car Auto Racing (NASCAR), Sara Christian finished 14th out of 33 drivers in the NASCAR’s first strictly stock car race in June 1949.^[20] Lula