BRITISH SOCIETY OF SPORTS HISTORY
SOUTH OF ENGLAND SPORT AND LEISURE HISTORY NETWORK
LONDON BRANCH: SPORT AND LEISURE HISTORY SEMINAR

'I AM NOT A FEMINIST':
AN ORAL HISTORY OF WOMEN'S CRICKET

Speaker: Rafaelle Nicholson (Queen Mary University of London)

Feminist activism has recently provided an important subject of study for oral historians, as the British Library's recent project “Sisterhood and After: An Oral History of the Women's Liberation Movement” suggests. The women interviewed for these projects are self-defined feminists, whose interviews reflect the preoccupation of activists with the importance of female autonomy in a male-dominated society. What these projects tend to overlook, however, is the women who deliberately placed themselves outside of the WLM, while nonetheless seeking to change prevailing attitudes to women in British society.

This paper will examine one such group, women cricketers, using the oral history interviews which I have conducted with former England players. Women's Libbers tended to neglect sport as an arena of conflict, but for those women who participated in male-dominated sports like cricket, the lack of autonomy which they faced in their leisure lives could be an everyday issue. How did they challenge the unequal power relationships which existed within cricket? How did they react when faced with strongly misogynistic attitudes to their participation within the sport? How did they attempt to change perceptions of women's sport, and overturn the stereotypes which followed them around? And why do these women consistently deny any kind of “feminist” motivation and seek to dissociate themselves from the “women's libbers” throughout the interviews, despite the very political nature of some of their actions?

Overall, the paper addresses the question of how far the “softly, softly approach”, as it was described by one of the interviewees, might have contributed to the changing discourses surrounding women's bodies and female autonomy in Britain during and in the wake of the second-wave feminist movement.

Rafaelle Nicholson is currently undertaking a PhD on 'Women's Cricket in Britain, 1945–2000', in the School of History at Queen Mary University of London, having previously completed a Masters in Women's Studies at the University of Oxford. She is also a regular contributor to cricket website Cricinfo's 'The Cordon' blog: http://www.espncricinfo.com/blogs/content/story/blogs?genre=487.

Time and Date: 5:15 PM, Monday, 25th November.
Location: Gordon Room (G34), Senate House, Malet Street, London WC1E 7HU

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