Playing With ‘Patriotic Fire’: Women and Football in the Antipodes during the Great War

Abstract

The revelation that women first played Australian Rules football during the period of the Great War is an important element in overall understandings of how both masculine and feminine ideals were challenged and redefined by sporting practices in a time of general social flux. This paper reveals that the genesis of the women's code was in Western Australia, where contests occurred as early as 1915. Three years later, with the war nearing its conclusion, the template of women's involvement in charity matches with strong military and patriotic overtones was adopted in the state of Victoria, the code's heartland. Investigations such as this one, indicative of the complex relationships between sport and gender during the First World War, offer scope for deeper comprehension of a much-studied military conflict, and point the way forward for those that bemoan the static agenda of research into women's football.

Is football now feminist? A critique of the use of McCaughey’s physical feminism to explain women’s participation in separate leagues in masculine sports1

“…al. 1999;Theberge 1997Theberge , 1998Theberge , 2003Velija 2011;Wedgewood 2004;Willson et al 2017; Wood and Garn 2016) and history of sport (for example, Cox 2012;Curtin 2016;Haines 2016;Hess 2005Hess , 2011Lenkic and Hess 2016;Linden 2015;Wedgewood 2005;Williams 2002Williams , 2007 literatures that have investigated, and mostly celebrated, the development of women's leagues 2 in the 'flag carrier' sports (Bryson, 1990 cited by Theberge 1997, 70) that were previously played mostly by men, and celebrated as 'epitomizing hegemonic masculinity' (Wedgwood 2005, 396). This literature suggests that it is apparent that newly legitimate female sporting subjectivities have been produced because of the successful development of these new leagues for females.…”

‘Why now’ for AFLW? Providing a new affirmative narrative for women’s football in the post-Covid world

“…This paper will only discuss the expansion in playing numbers during the twenty-first century. Lenkic and Hess (2016) have described the much longer contested history of participation by women in Australian Rules Football competitions (also see Hess 2005Hess , 2011Hess , 2019.…”

Improving the special motor qualities of experienced female volleyball players living on the territory of martial law

“…Another study [17] examined the historical features of women's football in Western Australia during the Great Wars. The author argues that such studies provide evidence of the complex relationship between sport and gender during the First World War.…”