A League of Their Own: Gender and Sports History Analysis

Introduction: The AAGPBL and A League of Their Own

The 1992 film A League of Their Own centers on the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League (AAGPBL) and its first season. The league was initiated to bridge the gap created by the suspension of Major League Baseball during the Second World War. For the very first time in baseball history, young women from urban softball and farm leagues across America were recruited to play professional baseball. The league was fairly short-lived, partly due to the return of men following the war's end and the subsequent re-establishment of MLB, which caused the AAGPBL's popularity to decline. Nevertheless, the dozen years during which the league operated left a lasting mark on sports history, since it offered female athletes the chance to professionally pursue baseball and earn significantly more than factory workers.

Gender, Male Dominance, and the Early History of Sport

In the United States, gender is one of the key categories of social stratification. The central ideology of Americans holds that every person is created equal; however, women were not explicitly included in the original framing of American civic life. It has been argued that sport served as a fundamental means of conveying dominant beliefs regarding male superiority. This has been illustrated through comparisons between the abilities of men and women — for example, the famous 1973 tennis match between Bobby Riggs and Billie Jean King (Early History of Sport in North America). Male superiority in the sports arena is reinforced through media marginalization of female sports, the branding of female athletes as lesbians, the very way in which athletes are defined, and the determination of which sports are counted as the "major" ones. All of this reflects and perpetuates male dominance.

Sports history, in fact, echoes male dominance — a pattern rooted in societal norms that determine who participates and how sports are managed, played, and viewed. A majority of sports exhibit male strength and are structured to reflect the physiology of males rather than females. Thus, sports have frequently served as an agent for the reproduction of male dominance (Early History of Sport in North America).

This process was outlined by Whitson (1990), who argues that sport is classified as "a male institution" not only in the numerical sense — noted by many — but also, more significantly, in the behavioral standards and values it espouses. Sport, he argues, eventually naturalizes male privilege not just on the playing field but also "in organizational hierarchies." Furthermore, Whitson contends that the acclaim and attention given to the male athletic lifestyle serve to confirm patterns of female subordination and male privilege — and, in fact, dominance structures — that exist well outside of sport (p. 20) (Early History of Sport in North America).

The film A League of Their Own revolves around women competing in a non-traditional sport setting — professional baseball. This choice of sport provides a particularly clear lens through which to observe the barriers women must overcome to achieve heroic status. Traditional society did not readily approve of women playing baseball. Though the past several decades have seen a shift in what constitutes acceptable sport for women, the definitional frameworks have been slow to change (Vantornhout, 1995). Taking into account the era in which the movie is set, the definition of less traditional forms of sport offered by Metheny's 1965 study remains relevant. The cultural beliefs and history of the period closely shaped how women were depicted in sport. Several women in the film have been portrayed as sex symbols (Miller, 1985) or as seductive and powerful figures (Kaplan, 1985). While the film was produced in 1992, it is set in an earlier era — specifically, 1943 to 1954 (Vantornhout, 1995).

Social and Economic Context: Women, Sport, and National Identity

In the mid-nineteenth century, a number of major economic and social changes swept through western society, including the development of industrial cities, the emergence of a capitalist economy, and corresponding social reforms. Research on the women of Petersburg, North Carolina, suggests that women's roles — as well as their political influence and economic independence — expanded during the early part of the nineteenth century. It is only through the application of gender analysis to the development of sport that one can explain why sport thrived in an increasingly rationalized society. During a period when manliness and physical vigor were culturally important, sport became a meaningful and widely valued activity. Just as wealth accumulation was once seen as a sign of moral virtue or divine favor, athletic skill came to signify dominance, morality, and reasonableness — and among youth, it served as a measurable indicator of a clean life and future success (Crosset, n.d.).

Dottie's story in the film reveals a key narrative strategy used to contain the threat that women athletes posed to the stability of national identity. Despite the diverse composition of the team — ranging from a barmaid to a former beauty queen — the story centers on sisters Dottie and Kit, with Dottie emerging as the dominant figure. Through this narrative focus, Dottie comes to represent an idealized image of the American woman. However, her life choices reflect a conservative repressiveness that overshadows the rest of the team, as well as Kit's comparatively more modern choices. Though some scholars argue that the film can be read as part of a feminist effort to recover women's history, the highly conservative femininity embodied by Dottie neither challenges nor extends the boundaries of existing gender roles — on the contrary, it appears to reinforce them (Bonzel, n.d.).