Basketball And Masculinity In Women's Sports

395 Words2 Pages
Basketball played an important in changing notions of femininity and masculinity by the progression of AAU basketball and the National Section on Women’s Athletics. Women originally were not given the opportunity to play basketball until the 1920s and 30s, and even when they began to play, their rules and regulation were dumbed down so that women did not portray societies standards of being too “masculine” and “mannish.” The double standard between field hockey and basketball was comical to look at because even though field hockey was a physical sport that exerted a lot of energy like basketball, but it wasn't considered to be “mannish” because it was played by more affluent and upper class people (Cahn,97). However, because basketball could