The athleticism of the women competing in the London Olympics—and their outfits—underscore how dramatically women’s dress and freedom have changed in the century since women like the American tennis great Florence Sutton began trail-blazing.
Sutton’s pioneering sportsmanship—and the achievements of other women in sports like golf and swimming—were striking indications of the liberties that Progressive Era women were intent on claiming. Circa 1900, it was rare for a respectable woman to do anything but walk, ride, or ski, partly because women were expected to be so heavily clad and partly because they were never supposed to go out unaccompanied.
While poking around for more on Florence and early American sportswomen, I made a surprising discovery. The first American woman to win an Olympic gold medal was Chicagoan Margaret Ives Abbott (1878-1955). She won the Olympic competition in women’s golf in Paris in 1900. Two years later, she became the wife of noted Chicago journalist Finley Peter Dunne. Margaret was born in India, where her father had been a merchant, but was raised in Chicago, where her mother (also named Margaret Ives Abbott) wrote for the Trib and had a literary salon.
Apparently the Paris Olympics were run in an off-hand fashion, for during her lifetime Margaret was never fully aware of what she had won. Only after her death did historians realize that her victory in what seemed to be just another golf tournament was actually part of the Olympic competition. And she received a bowl, not a medal.
Image: Florence Sutton circa 1910, courtesy of the Library of Congress, from this source.
June 25, 2015:
Margaret Abbott’s granddaughter, Miranda Dunne Parry,
has kindly shared this recollection of Margaret, written by her father Philip Dunne
and published in the August 1984 issue of Golf Digest. Enjoy!
Related:
Library of Congress photograph
of the US international female tennis players in 1895.
Great job on the research! Yes, women have come a long long way where athletics are concerned. In the U.S. a major milestone in helping women gain athletic parity with men came when the NCAA was more or less forced to give women the same opportunities as men in sports. I believe that a law suit had to be filed for this to occur. It was in the 1970s, I think.
Sam–Are you thinking of Title IX? It was in the 70s. Here is one description of the law, which in fact applied to all sorts of educational opportunities: http://www2.ucsc.edu/title9-sh/titleix.htm
Title IX was passed in 1972; in fact, its fortieth anniversary was on Sunday.
Thank you for writing in.
SB