"Embodied selves": the rise and development of concern for physical education, active games and recreation for American women, 1776-1865.

Although the question of equal rights for members of the female sex was raised during the founding of the New England colonies (as, for example, when Anne Hutchinson challenged the Puritan theocracy of Boston), such equality has yet to be fully reached in America in fact (or in law) in 1977. The 1970s witnessed a growing agitation for “women’s rights” and, with the enactment of Title IX of the Educational Amendments of 1972, objections to discriminatory treatment of members of the female sex have been increasingly voiced. Among the more visible thrusts of recent Title IX affirmative action efforts has been that which focuses upon women’s sports and physical education. There are times when one might be almost inclined to believed that modern women’s emancipation is intimately bound up with her athletic ability--or certainly with her physicality. (The role of the perception of one’s-in this case woman’s-corporal being in the establishment of selfhood and welf-worth is a topic which has not yet received sufficient attention in histories of physical education. The enormous importance of the interaction of “body” and culture, especially for women, is a topic far too complex to be treated here, however. Readers who are interested in the subject of sexuality and culture and the development of the self should consult the works of professional researchers in such fields as anthropology, psychology and sociology, as well as some of the more recent scholarly and popular works on the subject.)