The power of the telephone: feminism, sports and social change

Billie Jean King. Photo credit: Blog.taragana.com/sports

This blog post is part of my ongoing weekly series discussing the role of social media and female athletics.

I’ve been blogging the past couple of weeks about social media and its impact upon women in sport – mainly due to my own personal interests but also to fulfill a class requirement. This week, I’m compelled to change it up a little big and bring us back to a time before the Internet and social media, a time when we relied upon the telephone. Why? Because I am beginning to realize it’s just still as “social” as any other media utilized today.

I’m going to take you back to a time that I can only imagine (because I wasn’t alive). Let’s think about the 19760′s and 1970′s, a time when our foresisters (female equivalent of forefathers) organized and fought for an equal playing field as it relates to gender and sport.

Let’s think of people like Bernice Sandler, a part-time lecturer at the University of Maryland, and Rep. Martha Griffiths (D-Michigan), Rep. Edith Green (D-Ohio), researchers like Vivian Acosta and Linda Jean Carpenter, and athletes like Billie Jean King who started coming together at the grassroots level to create change. For the sake of this post, let’s call these women “feminists.” (but I don’t want to label anyone)

According to the Women’s Sports Foundation, during that time, there existed a combination of, “the modern feminist movement, a youth culture, and other sources of social unrest.” And these are women who did something about it.

Vivian Acosta and Linda Jean Carpenter. Photo credit: FairGameNews.com

Now, let’s take a look at how they were communicating. Primarily medium: the telephone. (And likely lots of writing – see picture to the right – and in-person events like lectures and speeches).

But the telephone is the tool that likely crossed geographic boundaries and helped form relationships that led to the successful grassroots movement – eventually the passing of Title IX, which, in my opinion, has transformed our culture for the better.

Today, we’re amidst a new revolution – a grassroots movement to enhance the professional profiles of female athletes. So not only do we want more opportunities to play, but we also want more opportunities to be heard – we want coverage in the media and opportunities to work in the industry. The bloggers of WomenTalkSports (WTS) are leading the way in this new movement of social sport change.

Over the past couple of weeks, Marie Hardin of the University of Pennsylvania has been conducting a series of in-depth interviews with bloggers in the WTS network (disclsure: WTS gets paid $25 for each participant who participates). Here’s an explanation of the study’s purpose:

“The purpose of this research is to examine the ways in which women who blog about sports are empowered through blogging and use their blogs as a site for feminist activism. This research will also determine how the content of women’s sports blogs supports the goals and values of feminism.”

As a result of her telephone conversations Dr. Hardin conducted, I believe a fire of sorts has been lit among some feminist-themed blog posts and comments in our community (myself included). Here are some you’ll find interesting:

• Tucker Center wrote, The Conversation: Social Media & Women’s Sports
• Q McCall of http://www.swishappeal.com wrote, Is there a “feminist responsibility” to support women’s sports?
• Fat Louie from the Women’s Sports Blog wrote, Is Twitter a Woman Thing?
• Rob Mars of the Athletic Women Blog wrote, Advancing Women’s Sports: Largely a Bootstrap Process
• Lisa Creech Bledsoe of The Glowing Edge wrote, Are You a Feminist?
  

… And I’m sure there’s more to come.
Now that we’re bridging the idea that what we’re doing at WomenTalkSports.com may actually be a feminist activity, I’m wondering if we can make some strides in communicating and working together with our feminist sisters and brothers online, creating a centralized community to take action on issues relationg to women in sport.

Maybe a conference call is in order… (stay tuned)