Cricket Witness No 4 - Women at the WIcket

99 Separate but Equal: Feminism Divides the Game official documents. As international captain, she had attempted to heal the divisions caused by the 1932/3 Bodyline series by insisting on amicable and sporting play, but also went to showcase women’s ability at the wicket. She banned players from wearing makeup and insisted on referring to each other by surnames on the field of play; Betty was determined to avoid accusations of leading a travelling female circus. Her commitment to the sport was relentless. When her full-time career did not intervene, she also coached schoolgirls in Kent, assisted the committee that produced the promotional film in 1939, wrote articles in Women’s Cricket, and served on the central WCA committee between 1934 and 1938. 16 Archdale was a committed feminist and socialist, and devoted her early career to these causes. A lifelong supporter of the Labour Party, she had once claimed to favour communism over capitalism following a holiday to Russia in July 1932, and from 1935 had worked as a secretary for the one of the first female Members of Parliament (MPs), Labour’s Ellen Wilkinson. When Wilkinson famously led her constituents in the Jarrow March in October 1936, from the Tyneside town to the capital to protest against high unemployment and poverty, Wilkinson was joined by Archdale who drove alongside the ‘crusaders’ for much of the journey. In later life, she became a passionate anti-fascist campaigner. Described as ‘a brilliant young lawyer’ by former-Suffragette Emmeline Pethick-Lawrence, Betty had lobbied the League of Nations for an Equal Rights Treaty alongside her mother and Lady Rhondda, and later produced reports for the League. Her role as part of this international campaign to improve women’s legal status led to the creation of the United Nations Commission on the Status of Women in 1946. 17 Archdale’s politics informed the way she approached cricket too. She had twice attempted to liberalise the Association’s dress code to widen the accessibility of the sport to poorer women and girls, but on each occasion it was heavily defeated. In her articles for Women’s Cricket , she was quick to note sexist remarks from the crowd and media, and how they were silenced by good play, and was eager to meet feminist groups interested in forging links with the Association. For Betty, cricket was likely a form of self-expression that reinforced her mother’s message she should enjoy activities ‘regardless of sex’. ‘I was never told “girls can’t do this” but did what I wanted to do’, Betty later recalled, and cricket epitomised her liberal spirit to push society’s boundaries. 18 The links between sport and feminism went beyond a handful of educated women in the WCA, however. Prior to the First World War, women’s emancipation and the physical liberation of sport was deeply interconnected in the eyes of many leading suffragists. Madame Bergman- Österberg’s intention when she formed her physical training college in 1885, so explained her niece, ‘was not Swedish gymnastics, nor even physical education… her life’s work was dedicated to social, economic, and spiritual freedom of women’. She urged her students to join the Gymnastics Teachers’ Suffrage Society (1908-15), while her imitator colleges, such as Anstey in Birmingham, promoted and raised money for