Article

The Scottish Cyclist and the New Woman: Representations of Female Cyclists in Scotland, 1890–1914

Authors:
To read the full-text of this research, you can request a copy directly from the author.

Abstract

In the 1890s British women witnessed a ‘cycling craze’ that had the potential to enhance the health and physical freedom of many women. This article examines the cycling craze from a Scottish perspective by investigating representations of Scottish female cyclists in a weekly magazine first printed in Glasgow in 1888 entitled The Scottish Cyclist. Despite suggestions that the popularity of cycling faltered after the initial ‘cycling-craze’ of the mid-1890s, perusal of The Scottish Cyclist suggests that a number of Scottish women continued to cycle beyond the years of this initial craze, thus eventually helping to make the cycling woman a familiar sight in Scottish society. This article argues that whilst by 1914 the cycling woman clad in ‘rational dress’ was no longer a key symbol of emancipation, still the determination of female cyclists in Scotland had contributed to the physical emancipation of women, giving them access to greater independence, mobility, and physical freedom.

No full-text available

Request Full-text Paper PDF

To read the full-text of this research,
you can request a copy directly from the author.

... For one, the bicycle is associated with a range of social issues and environment-related topics-and has long offered academics a platform of inquiry, from its connection to women's liberation (e.g. Hall, 2018;Macrae, 2015;Strange, 2002) to its implementation as a tool for social and economic development (e.g. Jones and Novo de Azevedo, 2013;Nwabughuogu, 1984;McSweeney et al., 2021). ...
Article
Full-text available
What happens to our sporting goods when we are done with them? Even though Sustainable Development Goal 12 focuses on responsible consumption and production, very few in the sports industry (and academy) have asked this question. With environmental degradation now a daily concern around the world, we can no longer produce and consume sporting goods without considering the end-of-use stage for these products. This study focuses on the bike and its role in global waste accumulation through various forms of planned obsolescence. Through interviews with experts in and around the bike industry and waste management, we provide insight into the environmental barriers that are structural and specific to the bike industry. We then advocate for extended producer responsibility and the circular economy as an imperfect but radical alternative future.
... 32 Journals dedicated to research on the home nations and Ireland fare little better in this respect: whilst between them Welsh History Review, Scottish Historical Review, Journal of Scottish Historical Studies, Irish Historical Studies and Irish Economic and Social History have included articles about sport during the last ten years, they again amount to relatively few and only one directly focuses on women. 33 This is a strange state of affairs because sports history has increasingly shown itself to be a critical sub-discipline and is now well recognised as a lens through which to understand social relations within society generallywhich necessarily includes women. 34 From the perspective of women's history it could, therefore, still be the case that competitive sport, physical recreation and leisure are still being 'overlooked in favour of topics [seen as more] crucial to female advancement in the public sphere'. ...
Article
In this piece we broadly reflect upon the progress made in the production and reception of women’s sports history during the past ten years in the UK. In doing so, we argue that the sources generated via interests in the present are likely to have an impact on the future content of women’s sports history. We make our observations about the treatment of women in contemporary sport based upon our respective interactions with media representations, but necessarily as critical sports historians we are not only concerned with the ways in which the historiography of women’s sport has developed during the past ten years. We are also curious about how women’s sports history might continue to develop in the near and distant future, not least as we anticipate it as written through a broader combination of sources. Although processes of locating women’s narratives and experiences may be little different, ‘finding’ women in a representative range of sports – including those beyond team games and elite participation – may not be any less challenging for those researching in the future as compared to those researching today.
... One that is often cited in popular publications is 'Bicycle face', and other dangers of female cycling. This sport is clearly a site where social anxieties and medical anxieties came together: the phenomenon of female cycling was a social (and sometimes political) revolution, associated with female liberation, reclamation of the public sphere, mobility, and so on (Ebert, 2010;Kinsey, 2011;Macrae, 2015;Simpson, 2001). Doctors, meanwhile, worried that the vibrations of riding might sexually arouse riders and make them into nymphomaniacs, or alternatively that the hard seat might cause pelvic injury and even infertility (Marland, 2019). ...
Chapter
Kein anderes Thema hat den organisierten Sport in den vergangenen knapp eineinhalb Jahren dermaßen irritiert, wie es beim eSport der Fall ist. Mit Blick auf die durch den Koalitionsvertrag der Bundesregierung formulierten Ziele zum eSport, der zunehmenden Digitalisierung unserer Gesellschaft sowie letztlich auch dem Verhältnis von Technik und Sport, werden im Beitrag unterschiedliche (sportwissenschaftliche) Problembereiche betrachtet, die zur Beantwortung der titulierten Frage beitragen sollen. Die Ausführungen betrachten exemplarisch die Entwicklungen im eSport, die sich jedoch aufgrund der enormen systemischen Dynamik nur in Momentaufnahmen erfassen lassen.
Article
Full-text available
تعد هذه الدراسة استكمالا لسلسلة دراسات تم فيها تحديد احتياجات النساء في زي ركوب الدراجات الهوائية وتوظيفها لابتكار تصاميم مقترحة باستخدام نظرية التصميم المتمحور حول المستخدم (UCD)، حيث تهدف الدراسة إلى قياس مدى توافق هذه التصاميم مع احتياجات النساء. استكملت الدراسة المرحلة الرابعة من UCD والتي تم فيها تقييم النماذج الاولية من قبل نفس العينة من النساء واللاتي ساهمن في تحديد الاحتياجات. وفي هذه الدراسة تم استخدام تحليل التباين لقياس متوسط الفروقات بين التصاميم في كلا من الجانب الوظيفي والجمالي وتفضيلات النساء منفصلة ومجتمعة. كما تم بعدها استخدام اختبار LSD للمقارنات المتعددة للمقارنة بين التصاميم في هذه الجوانب والتفضيلات. أشارت النتائج إلى وجود فروق بين التصاميم، وعليه تم اختيار أفضل أربعة منها وهي التصميم السابع يليه الخامس ثم الثاني تم الثالث على التوالي، ليتم إضافة بعض التفاصيل عليها وذلك بالرجوع لآراء النساء. كان التصميم السابع الأكثر توافقا مع احتياجات النساء ولزيادة توافقه تم إضافة غطاء الرأس لتحقيق رغبة المحجبات منهن. أما بالنسبة للتصميم الخامس والثاني فقد تم إضافة وتعديل أماكن الأشرطة المضيئة في التصميمين وذلك لزيادة الأمان والسلامة أثناء ممارسة ركوب الدراجة الهوائية. كما تم تقليل عدد الكسرات في بنطلون التصميم الثالث وذلك لعدم مناسبته وظيفيا وفقا لآراء العينة حيث إن الكسرات تعطي اتساع في البنطلون في منطقة الساق مما يعيق الحركة أثناء ممارسة الرياضة. ونتج عن ذلك أن التصاميم الأربعة باختلافاتها التصميمية توافقت مع احتياجات النساء المختلفين في عاداتهم وعليه تم توفير زي لركوب الدراجات الهوائية يغطي شريحة كبيرة من المجتمع. وبالتالي توص ي الدراسة بتنفيذ التصاميم المقترحة وتقيمها من خلال التجربة العملية وتحسينها. هذا إلى جانب تبني المصانع المحلية للتصاميم المقترحة وإنتاجها محليا.
Chapter
There are many ways in which the mobility experiences of women may differ from those of men. In this chapter, we focus specifically on these differences by reviewing some of the factors that create gender difference and by examining the experiences of a small number of female diarists in a range of different mobility settings. Diary evidence shows that women frequently travelled on foot, both alone and in the company of others. This was the usual mobility experience for many women. While most such trips were unproblematic, in some instances female pedestrians did encounter the unwanted attention of men, and the extent to which some women could walk alone was also affected by social class and associated societal norms. Female diarists were also frequent users of public transport. As with travel on foot, most journeys were unproblematic, but the diarists did record a small number of occasions where some degree of unwanted attention or harassment occurred. Compared to male diarists, females had less easy access to independent and private transport modes. Although there are examples of women driving either a carriage or, in the twentieth century, a motor car, for the most part women travelled as passengers in private vehicles.
Article
The last two decades of the nineteenth century were a boom period for cycling, not only in Britain but also on Continental Europe and in the United States. Cycling was cheap, accessible and democratic, and the proliferation of cycling clubs made it a sociable sport for all classes and genders. Part of this social aspect of cycling involved weekend stops at popular country pubs and inns, some of which became semi-official headquarters for various clubs. This article examines the visitors’ books of three such pubs in the south of England and suggests that inscriptions in them provide an insight into the values and attitudes of recreational cyclists. It uses Benedict Anderson’s notion of the “imagined community” as a template for understanding how a diverse group of individuals visiting the same location at different times could forge a thriving virtual subculture via visitors’ books and guest books.
Article
Full-text available
Gestützt auf tief verankerte Ressentiments und etablierte Geschlechterrollen gingen der Emanzipation von Frauen im englischen Radsport Ende des 19. Jahrhunderts heftige gesellschaftliche Debatten voraus. Während in der Forschung dahingehend mit der Flâneurie on Bicycles alltägliche Radfahrten zur Zeit der Jahrhundertwende bereits berücksichtigt wurden, fehlt eine Betrachtung mehrtägiger Radreisen gänzlich. Unter dem Blickpunkt von Gender und Mobility definiert dieser Artikel mit der Voyage frühe Radreisen erstmals als Sonderform insbesondere weiblicher Mobilitätsgeschichten im Sport. Erläutert werden sowohl die vielfältigen Voraussetzungen als auch spezifischen Charakteristika zeitgenössischer Radreisen. Zur Konkretisierung wird mit dem kaum erforschten Tagebuch Amy Maldens aus den Jahren 1901 und 1903 zudem eines der raren Selbstzeugnisse weiblicher Radreisender analysiert. Online: http://www.historioplus.at/?p=1229.
Chapter
This chapter outlines the ways in which Western medical theories have shaped inequalities in sport, focusing in particular on the relationship between medicine and gender in sports and physical exercise from the nineteenth through to the early twenty-first century. It suggests that historians may have overstated the medical critique of exercise in the nineteenth century, obscuring the level of, and support for, female participation; but also that ‘separate but equal’ was a principle upheld by both the medical and sporting establishment when it came to women’s participation in the early twentieth century. It finishes with the most high-profile conflict between medical theory and sporting practice – the introduction of sex tests in sport – demonstrating how inequalities can interact in intersectional ways. Further, it highlights that women’s participation in exercise can be limited by their absence in scientific and medical studies as much as by the over-scrutiny of their bodies.
Article
This article uses testimony gathered from oral history interviews and contemporary physical education sources to explore the schooling of the young female body in Scotland between 1930 and 1960. It looks at the ways in which girls were educated about their own bodies and their physical capabilities at school, taking into account official understandings of the adolescent female body and how these may have affected girls' experiences of exercise. The article examines the ways through which girls negotiated the particularities of their adolescent female bodies throughout their exercise experiences, and specifically how they learned about and coped with menstruation and body changes. It argues that the school environment within which most Scottish girls would first have been exposed to exercise would hardly have been conducive to the formation of a healthy relationship between girls and their bodies.
Article
Athletic opportunities for females have reached an extent that few women living in the nineteenth century might ever have imagined. For more than two decades the women's 10,000-metre run has been part of the Olympics. Women's wrestling was added at Athens in 2004 and women's boxing competitions will begin at the 2012 London Games. Changing cultural norms, especially those brought forth by ‘women's movements’ of the 1960s as well as the ensuing amazingly successful athletic performances that women attained, have been of the utmost importance. In the United States, as the ‘New Woman” of the late 1800s began to engage in a modest game of golf or tennis, or take a leisurely bicycle ride, the then dominant theme – strenuous physical activity is inimical to a female's health – that had been articulated in books like Edward Clarke's Sex in Education, Or a Fair Chance for Girls (1873) began to be challenged. Few late nineteenth-century women offered a greater challenge than did ‘professional sportswomen’ like pedestriennes Ada Anderson and Exilda La Chapelle, competitive cyclist Louise Armiando, and the boxer Hattie Stewart. Whereas their feats were ignored by more elevated publications like Scribner's Magazine and Outing daily newspapers sometimes could be quite complimentary. The coverage given by Sporting Life (considered by many to be the major sports journal of the times) was somewhat mixed. When it came to baseball (the game that ‘made men men’) Sporting Life was vehemently opposed to any woman engaging in America's ‘national pastime’. So was Albert Spalding, co-founder of the lucrative A.G. Spalding Sporting Goods Company. This article sheds new light upon these and other still too little known matters regarding women who ‘contested the norm’ in late nineteenth-century America.
Article
The emergence of the ‘modern woman’ in Inter-War Britain was the result of a process which began at the end of the previous century. The new modern woman was symbolic of youth and freedom; she embraced life and spent her time in the pursuit of fun and enjoyment. The female body was, in many ways, one of the central focuses of the new modernity. The way it was dressed, its hair styled and even its shape were all intrinsic symbols of a woman's conformity to modernity and its associated ideals. Sport could provide an opportunity to train and tone the body in an effort to conform to the new idealised ‘boyish’ shape, to improve posture and, it was believed, even to enhance beauty. Sport therefore offered an opportunity to acquire some of the ‘essential’ attributes of the young modern woman, a lithe figure with grace of carriage and clear complexion. However, sport also played an important role in lifestyle.Yet sport's place in discussions of modernity has been overlooked by British sports and gender historians. This article will seek to address this gap in the historiography by examining the intersection between concepts of modernity and sport. As we will see, there is much evidence to suggest that participation in sport was a fundamental, yet hitherto overlooked, element of modernity for many women during the inter-war period in Britain. This study will explore the centrality of sport to the lives of these modern women by probing notions of emancipation and developments in fashion and consumer culture alongside the concomitant developments of sport for women.
Article
‘Mixed doubles’ was regarded as the most popular type of lawn tennis game for those preferring the ‘social’ aspects to competition. An analysis of behavioural etiquette in mixed doubles from 1870 to 1939 reveals a considerable amount about shifting gender relations in wider British society. Findings are presented from over 50 textbooks and instructional guides on mixed doubles play published throughout this period in order to answer the following questions: What differences are evident in the ways that men and women were instructed to play mixed doubles? How was the often uneasy balance between male competitiveness and chivalry dealt with in the context of play? What can an analysis of changing fashions of female tennis players and associated behavioural etiquette in mixed doubles tell us about shifting gender relations in wider British society, and what role did these developments play within broader feminist movements?
Article
The gender ocean still has hidden depths1
Article
As Hargreaves and McCrone have shown, from the mid‐nineteenth century physical education became an integral yet relatively unregulated feature of the curriculum of the middle‐ and upper class girls. By the interwar years, however, girls’ physical education had radically evolved. Increased state intervention in education from the turn of the century onwards had an impact on all aspects of the curriculum. Government legislation and departmental reports regarding the formalisation of the physical education syllabus clearly highlight contemporary opinions concerning the potential use, need and importance of such training for children. During the interwar years these ideas were combined with newly emerging concerns. These included an increasing preoccupation with eugenicist theories relating to the nation’s health, and moral and social training encompassing notions of citizenship.
Article
For nineteenth-century New Zealand middle-class women, cycling elicited significant anxieties about femininity. Critics ultimately feared that women would become masculine in both their appearance and their conduct. The masculinization of women was neatly embodied in the 'New Woman' who, in contrast to the conventional image of women, heralded a new feminine identity: physically and politically active, and prominent in public. The ideology of the New Woman arose in the context of widespread social change for Western women throughout the nineteenth century, after decades of agitation for improved access to education, employment, political representation, and equal legal rights with men. In this article, it is argued that middle-class female cyclists tried to reconcile the ideology of the New Woman with conventional beliefs about femininity to create an alternative, yet still respectable, identity in order to convince their critics that despite riding the bicycle, they were still feminine.
Article
The women who took part in the campaign for female suffrage in Britain are often portrayed as dedicated, serious and devoted to the cause, with little time for other interests. Although this may be true for the most active suffragists, there were many who joined local societies and supported the movement while continuing to live ordinary lives. This article demonstrates that a significant sample of activists of all ages and backgrounds were enthusiastic sportswomen and espoused a wide range of other pastimes. Many also belonged to a ladies' club, particularly those in London's West End, in which they could dine, conduct business or relax away from home or work. By taking part in the increasingly diverse social, cultural and sporting environment available to middle-class Edwardian women, they struck a further blow for female emancipation.