Watching women take home gold medals and sparkling trophies from sporting competitions was not always as commonplace as it is in today's society. Like in many aspects of our culture, women throughout history struggled against prejudice and dealt with condescending male counterparts before reaching their place in the spotlight of athletics. Before Venus Williams volleyed her way to her fourth Grand Slam, Lucy Diggs Slowe proved African-American women could win titles alongside men. Before Danica Patrick raced past the finish line in the Indy Japan 300, Odette Siko helped to pave the racetrack for women in auto-racing. And Madge Syers was breaking rules and changing the course of figure skating history long before Michelle Kwan spiraled onto the ice. Their names may have been forgotten in history, outshined by men like Babe Ruth, Michael Jordan, and Muhammed Ali, but the legacies of women in sports live on today through their predecessors. The athletic women of history have stories filled with dramatic struggles, game-changing firsts, and historic victories. They deserve to be told.

A groundbreaking history of how women found synchronicity—and power—in water. “If you’re not strong enough to swim fast, you’re probably not strong enough to swim ‘pretty,’?” said a young Esther Williams to theater impresario Billy Rose. Since the nineteenth century, tensions between beauty and strength, aesthetics and athleticism have both impeded and propelled the careers of female swimmers—none more so than synchronized swimmers, for whom Williams is often considered godmother. In this revelatory history, Vicki Valosik traces a century of aquatic performance, from vaudeville to the Olympic arena, and brings to life the colorful cast of characters whose “pretty swimming” not only laid the groundwork for an altogether new sport but forever changed women’s relationships with water. Williams, who became a Hollywood sensation for her splashy “aquamusicals,” was just one in a long, bedazzled line of swimmers who began their careers as athletes but found greater opportunity, and often social acceptance, in the world of show business. Early starlets like Lurline the Water Queen performed “scientific” swimming, a set of moves previously only practiced by men—including Benjamin Franklin—that focused on form and exhibited mastery in the water. Demonstrating their fancy feats in aquariums and water tanks rolled onto music hall stages, these women stunned Victorian audiences with their physical dexterity and defied society’s rigid expectations of what was proper and possible for their sex. Far more than bathing beauties, they ushered in sensible swimwear and influenced lifesaving and physical education programs, helping to drop national drowning rates and paving the way for new generations of female athletes. When a Chicago physical educator matched their aquatic movements to music in the 1920s, young girls flocked to take part in “synchronized swimming.” But despite overwhelming love from audiences and the Olympic ambitions of its practitioners, “synchro” was long perceived as little more than entertaining pageantry, and its athletes would face a battle against the current to earn a spot at the highest echelons of sport. Now, on the fortieth anniversary of synchronized swimming’s elevation to Olympic status, Swimming Pretty honors its incredible history of grit, glamor, and sheer athleticism.

In “Hidden in History: The Untold Stories of Female Explorers and Adventurers,” travel the globe — and history. While it’s fairly common to have women researchers, pilots, and captains in the 21st century, this was not always the case. Exploring and adventuring, even in the name of science and research, were privileged activities reserved solely for men. But some women just couldn’t stay put, even when faced with the harsh resistance of those who favored the norm. These women broke with convention and trekked into the unknown, paving the way for women of today to seek adventure as they see fit. In 1766, Jeanne Baret performed botanical research as she made a complete voyage around the world, making her the first woman ever recorded to do so. Marguerite Hay Drummond-Hay became the first woman to circumnavigate the globe from the sky when she flew around the world in a zeppelin prior to World War II. Louise Arner Boyd traveled to the Arctic in 1926 –– a hard journey even in modern times. Now we have women like Sylvia Earle, a world-renowned oceanographer and the first woman to walk on the ocean floor, and Barbara Hillary, the first woman of color to travel to both the North and the South Pole. With this installment in the Hidden in History series, readers can explore for themselves the exciting stories, harrowing adventures, and meaningful research conducted by these daring women. No longer forgotten in the past, the adventurous women of yesterday can once again inspire tomorrow’s explorers to chart their own expeditions into the great unknown.

Women and Sport: Continuing a Journey of Liberation and Celebration is a comprehensive textbook for interdisciplinary courses that focus on women and gender studies in sport. It provides readers with thought-provoking discussions about the history, evolution, and current role of women in sport.

Discover 25 women who challenged the stereotypes of what it means to play like a girl. These women worked to even the playing field and steppped up to score points for women all around the world.

This pioneering book in elite athlete wellbeing brings together the narratives of athletes and wellbeing practitioners in high-performance sport with cutting-edge theorizing from world-leading academics to explore pertinent mental wellbeing matters that present for elite athletes both during and after their careers. The journey of the elite athlete is considered from entering the high-performance system as a youth performer through to retirement, with contributions illuminating the ways in which mental wellbeing can be impacted – both negatively and positively – through common place experiences. Methods of creating holistic high-performance sports cultures along with common mental wellbeing influencers, such as parents, education, faith, injury and (de)selection are explored, as well as the ramifications of uncommon events on mental wellbeing, such as whistleblowing, legal disputes, psychological disorders and COVID-19. Drawing on this analysis, the book then proffers thought-provoking strategies for how the mental wellbeing of both athletes and staff can be understood, developed and supported, ultimately driving elite sport cultural transformation to put the person first and the athlete second. Each chapter presents the wellbeing experience from the vantage of the athlete or the wellbeing practitioner, followed by an academic unpacking of the situation. This makes the book a must read for students and researchers working in sport coaching, sport psychology, applied sport science or sport management, as well as practitioners interested in facilitating a duty of care for high performing athletes, and working in coaching, sport science support, athlete development programs, NGB policy and administration or welfare services.

While efforts to include gay and lesbian athletes in competitive sport have received significant attention, it is only recently that we have begun examining the experiences of transgender athletes in competitive sport. This book represents the first comprehensive study of the challenges that transgender athletes face in competitive sport; and the challenges they pose for this sex-segregated institution. Beginning with a discussion of the historical role that sport has played in preserving sex as a binary, the book examines how gender has been policed by policymakers within competitive athletics. It also considers how transgender athletes are treated by a system predicated on separating males from females, consequently forcing transgender athletes to negotiate the system in coercive ways. The book not only exposes our culture’s binary thinking in terms of both sex and gender, but also offers a series of thought-provoking and sometimes contradictory recommendations for how to make sport more hospitable, inclusive and equitable. Transgender Athletes in Competitive Sport is important reading for all students and scholars of the sociology of sport with an interest in the relationship between sport and gender, politics, identity and ethics.