Women's Role in British Competitive Rowing During the Second Half of the Twentieth Century
Lead Research Organisation:
Manchester Metropolitan University
Department Name: Exercise and Sports Science
Abstract
This project will help to explain to a wider audience the current status of women's sport and to illuminate some of the ways that women can transcend the traditional boundaries that have constrained participation. Engagement with both practitioners and the archives will enable the student to identify and explain critical moments and/or approaches that have characterized the success of British women's rowing at Olympic level during recent years and draw some conclusions about policy and structures that will help future administrators across all sports to implement change in order to drive progress in female sports participation at this level. Within the sport of rowing, the results of this study will help to highlight the changes that have occurred, the foundations upon which those changes have been built and, it is anticipated, will also emphasize the importance of individual contributions to the development of the sport. On a wider level it is anticipated that this study will provide further impetus to the gradually emerging recognition of women's high levels of achievement in all aspects of social and business life. In that respect, it will prove a powerful exemplar of what women have achieved, despite traditional constraints.
People |
ORCID iD |
| Dave Day (Primary Supervisor) | |
| Lisa Taylor (Student) |
| Title | Totally Thames (Thames Festival Trust) |
| Description | I was approached to support a Thames Festival Trust rowing history project for the Thames Festival 2018. Working with the lead curator, Jen Kavenagh, I consulted on and developed the women's rowing history content for a series of exhibitions and engagement activities run by the Festival. This was based on the collections held at the River & Rowing Museum and the knowledge of professional rowing I have built up as a counterpoint to my work in the amateur context. The exhibitions were in three locations in London - the Guildhall, riverside by Tate Modern, and on the Thames Clippers - the first two focused on the Doggetts Coat and Badge as 'the world's oldest boat race', and the second on rowing as a working class pursuit. (The material presented on the Thames Clippers was less narrative.) Panels showed imagery from the museum's collection and narrative interpretation, and were an important way of communicating women's role in the history of the sport - a role that is often obscured or omitted. |
| Type Of Art | Artistic/Creative Exhibition |
| Year Produced | 2018 |
| Impact | Widespread public visibility and reframing of the sport of rowing outside of a male, upper-class, amateur context. The month-long festival is heavily engaged with connecting the public with the river and its history, with a strong sense of place. Locating women within this was an important element. |
| URL | https://totallythames.org/whats-on/past/2018 |
| Title | Women's rowing case (River & Rowing Museum) |
| Description | I supported the curator leading on the installation of a women's rowing history case in the Rowing Gallery at the River & Rowing Museum with subject knowledge and oral history material collected as a core part of the funded research. The display was entitled 'The Evolution of British Women's Rowing: Sydney 2000 to Tokyo 2020'. This was in planning from the start of 2019 and launched in November 2019. |
| Type Of Art | Artistic/Creative Exhibition |
| Year Produced | 2019 |
| Impact | While some efforts have been made to integrate the women's sport into the narrative in the Rowing Gallery, female rowers had enormously under-represented. This case was an intervention to address this. It was launched along with the installation of a major acquisition, a boat raced by two highly decorated female Olympians, which replaced a boat used by a men's crew in the main gallery. An evening event was held which attracted senior rowing officials and a number of international athletes, followed by a day-long conference 'Rowing Futures' which had approximately 100 attendees. |
| Description | The project explicitly aims to explore the history of women's rowing. It also - importantly - aims to use this historical foundation to shed light on current and future issues within the sport. It should, ultimately, offer evidence to inform reflection on (and development of) policy and practice as it related to women's sport. This element of the work will be articulated and communicated more clearly when analysis is at a more advanced stage. The outputs discussed elsewhere in this report - publications, engagement activities and creative endeavours - offer evidence of volition from within the project to disseminate it, but also of an appetite for more, and different, discourses around women and women's sport to enter the national conversation and the academic mainstream. The need to understand and interrogate female contributions to sport with greater rigour is clear, and the positive feedback from publishers, alternative platforms including broadcast, and the audiences built for public talks is testament to how current and relevant the issue is perceived to be across a wide range of audiences. |
| First Year Of Impact | 2017 |
| Sector | Education,Culture, Heritage, Museums and Collections |
| Impact Types | Cultural,Societal |
| Description | Collaborative Doctoral Partnership |
| Organisation | River & Rowing Museum |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Sector | Charity/Non Profit |
| PI Contribution | The project is structured as a Collaborative Doctoral Partnership, and as such the university and the museum are jointly responsible for the research aims, delivery and outcomes.I function as a satellite member of staff at the museum, so contribute to the activities of the museum and to defining and developing the research and presentation of narratives in the women's sport. An important contribution will be the deposit of a collection of oral history interviews conducted as part of this project. I have supported the curatorial team with interpretation and presentation of rowing and sporting narratives both in the records and the galleries and made significant contributions to public engagement as outlined elsewhere in this report. |
| Collaborator Contribution | I have been given unimpeded access to archives and research materials through the museum, as well as additional funding for research costs including training, travel and some conference attendance. Initially I was under the supervision of a curator with deep knowledge of the rowing collection and who had secured the majority of the collection pertaining to women during her tenure. |
| Impact | All of the outcomes reported relating to this project have resulted from the collaboration, since the project is inherently collaborative. |
| Start Year | 2016 |
| Description | AHRC CDP3 Town Hall |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | Regional |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | I was invited by the CDP Consortium Chair JD Hill (British Museum) to speak at a Town Hall event for the now-current CDP funding round in April 2018, to offer insight from working in a small institution without a designated research function and a student perspective on how the programme works. I am also the student representative for the 2016 CDP cohort and attend CDP Consortium business meetings on their behalf. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2018 |
| Description | BBC Celebrity Antiques Road Trip |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A broadcast e.g. TV/radio/film/podcast (other than news/press) |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | National |
| Primary Audience | Public/other audiences |
| Results and Impact | I successfully pitched the use of the River & Rowing Museum for the factual segment of an episode of the BBC programme Celebrity Antiques Road Trip, which first aired during prime time on BBC 2 on 18 December 2017. I presented a four-minute segment on the programme which exposed some of the stories in women's rowing history as part of a British sporting past, and the museum itself, as filming took place in its galleries. The museum, which was - and remains - committed to securing greater public awareness and engagement, viewed this as an excellent opportunity to do so and were very positive about the results. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2017 |
| URL | https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b09k81jh |
| Description | Blue Plaque Rebellion YouTube segment |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Engagement focused website, blog or social media channel |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Public/other audiences |
| Results and Impact | I collaborated with a women's sport campaigner, lobbyist and author, Anna Kessel MBE and the Women's Sport Trust, on the 'Blue Plaque Rebellion', a project aiming to highlight the discrepancies between public awareness, acknowledgement and celebration of women in sport compared to men. This campaign used the number of English Heritage Blue Plaques, and sporting statuary, as a starting point to discuss these issues, and then identified a series of sportswomen to research and publicise. My work on one important female figure in rowing was seen to be a strong fit, and myself and the then Chair of British Rowing both featured on a YouTube video 'A London Tour of the Rebellion', presented and produced by an established and popular vlogger, Leena Norms (c.57,000 followers). The video received more than 5,000 views in the first year. I also contributed a short profile piece on the woman featured for the campaign website. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2017 |
| URL | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0ZbhZVAAks4 |
| Description | Bordeaux residential study |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Postgraduate students |
| Results and Impact | Residential workshop hosted by the University of Bordeaux, as part of a collaboration with Manchester Metropolitan University. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2017 |
| Description | Collaboration with the Glasgow Buildings Preservation Trust on the West Boathouse project |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A formal working group, expert panel or dialogue |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | Local |
| Primary Audience | Public/other audiences |
| Results and Impact | Collaboration with the Glasgow Buildings Preservation Trust on the West Boat House Project as a consultant and 'friendly critic', offering both topical expertise on rowing history, and experience from within a sporting museum. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2017,2018 |
| URL | https://www.gbpt.org/west-boathouse.html |
| Description | International Women's Day talk (Manchester Metropolitan University) |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | Local |
| Primary Audience | Postgraduate students |
| Results and Impact | A public lecture, delivered with Professor Dave Day and Dr Samantha-Jayne Oldfield at Manchester Metropolitan University, to mark International Women's Day 2018. This was open to the public; the majority of the in-person attendees were students, but a recording of this lecture has been made available to all on the Playing Pasts platform (see link below). |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2018 |
| URL | http://www.playingpasts.co.uk/articles/gender-and-sport/historical-perspectives-on-female-contributi... |
| Description | International Women's Day talk (River & Rowing Museum) |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | Local |
| Primary Audience | Public/other audiences |
| Results and Impact | I was invited to give a public lecture as a stand-alone event to mark International Women's Day 2018. This formed part of the River & Rowing Museum's programme of adult eduction activities. Since being involved in the funded project, the museum has shown greater interest in presenting stories from the women's sport as well as the men's. The material I have uncovered (and created through oral history), my analysis and my presentation skills have enabled them to do so much more effectively. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2018 |
| Description | Keynote - Critical reflections on the practice of oral history: opportunities, costs, and problematics |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Other audiences |
| Results and Impact | Keynote speech to a research group based in Spain which is developing expertise in oral history, specifically as it pertains to women's sport. Myself and the other speaker presented, chaired a joint discussion and fielded questions. I have been invited to continue collaborating with the group. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2020 |
| Description | Press Play! Oral history workshop |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | National |
| Primary Audience | Postgraduate students |
| Results and Impact | I worked with a Collaborative Doctoral Partnership (CDP) student colleague based at the World Rugby Museum to design and secure funding (c.£2000) for an oral history workshop which took place in October 2018. We jointly devised the programme. I engaged an experienced oral historian and the Vice Chair of the British Society of Sport History to run a technical workshop and a round-table discussion respectively, and built and managed a basic website for the event, while my colleague engaged a practitioner working with oral history and creative practice and managed logistics with the venue. I additionally secured a small grant to subsidise a networking event after the workshop from Sporting Heritage. The event was booked to capacity and received very positive feedback; a report (written by my colleague) is available on the AHRC website (https://www.ahrc-cdp.org/press-play-active-oral-history-practice-and-dissemination-workshop/). |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2018 |
| URL | https://pressplayoralhistory.wordpress.com/ |
| Description | Rowing conference presentation ('Women of the Welsh Harp') |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Other audiences |
| Results and Impact | Invited to deliver the opening lecture for a one-day, biennial event at the River & Rowing Museum. This is an important event for the museum in maintaining engagement with donors and rowing history enthusiasts, notably a cohort based in the USA. In 2017 this was also tied to a film screening and author talk delivered the night before. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2017 |
| URL | https://www.rrm.co.uk/whats-on/backsplash/ |
| Description | Seminar at the Institute for Historical Research (London) |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | National |
| Primary Audience | Other audiences |
| Results and Impact | Six people attended the seminar, which was also recorded and published as a podcast, thus reaching more people. The attendance of one individual and discussion afterwards has prompted greater collaboration between the British Society of Sport History (seminar organisers) and the British Library's web archiving project. A research link was also built with a private archive of relevance to this project. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2019 |
| URL | https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/sport-and-leisure-history-lisa-taylor/id868133959?i=1000456204... |
| Description | Sporting Heritage conference |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | National |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | Presentation of a short paper as part of the annual conference, to communicate my research and the CDP programme. The audience for the conference is a mixture of academics, heritage practitioners, and enthusiasts. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2017 |
| Description | Summer school |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Postgraduate students |
| Results and Impact | Week-long residential workshop working with postgraduate students from across Europe on sport-related topics. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2017 |