776
B.C. - The first Olympics are held in ancient Greece.
Women are excluded, so they compete every four years in
their own Games of Hera, to honor the Greek goddess who
ruled over women and the earth.
1865
- Matthew Vassar opens Vassar College with a special School
of Physical Training with classes in riding, gardening,
swimming, boating, skating and "other physical accomplishments
suitable for ladies to acquire ... bodily strength and grace."
1876
- Nell Saunders defeated Rose Harland in the first United
States women's boxing match, receiving a silver butter dish
as a prize.
1882
- At the YWCA in Boston, the first athletic games for women
are held.
1884
- Women's singles tennis competition is added to Wimbledon.
Maud Watson wins in both 1884 and '85.
1887
- A women's field hockey club is started in Surrey, England.
1890's
- More than a million American women will own and ride bicycles
during the next decade. It is the first time in American
history that an athletic activity for women will become
widely popular.
1896
- Susan B. Anthony says that "the bicycle has done more
for the emancipation of women than anything else in the
world."
1896
- At the first modern Olympics in Athens, a woman, Melpomene,
barred from the official race, runs the same course as the
men, finishing in 4 hours 30 minutes. Baron Pierre de Coubertin,
founder of the modern Olympics, says, "It is indecent that
the spectators should be exposed to the risk of seeing the
body of a women being smashed before their very eyes. Besides,
no matter how toughened a sportswoman may be, her organism
is not cut out to sustain certain shocks."
1900
- The first 19 women to compete in the modern Olympics Games
in Paris, France, play in just three sports: tennis, golf,
and croquet. Margaret I. Abbott is the first American woman
to win an Olympic gold medal. An art student in Paris, she
won the nine-hole golf tournament by shooting a 47.
1914
- The American Olympic Committee formally opposes women's
athletic competition in the Olympics. The only exception
is the floor exercise, where women are allowed to only wear
long skirts.
1917
- The American Physical Education Association forms a committee
on women's athletics to draft standardized, separate rules
for women's collegiate field hockey, swimming, track and
field, and soccer.