Cricket Witness No 4 - Women at the WIcket

108 and civic duty. It was not until 1998 that it sacrificed independence, for the ultimate benefit of the sport, and merged with the England and Wales Cricket Board. In the interwar years and well into the 20th century, the Association was a self-professed democratic space for equals where everyone (with enough money or fortune) had the same opportunities. Women’s mass adoption of the national game echoed their improved status as citizens and workers, and reflected their self-confidence in public life following emancipation. Amateurism was religiously followed not simply because of English middle-and upper-class infatuation with its perceived morality, but because it was a rational response to women’s unique and precarious situation. The Association’s rejection of the ‘new modern woman’ and its silence on matters concerning domesticity were important measures for attracting public support. In a hostile environment, the WCA’s ‘separate but equal’ policy prioritised the future of the sport over immediate financial gain. Like new or difference feminism, this philosophy was never confrontational or revolutionary but subtle and used existing, accepted beliefs of separate social spheres to assert sovereignty on the sport. 47 1 Nottingham Evening Post (15 June 1929), 3; Yorkshire Evening Post (12 May 1931); CWS, Ourselves (July 1929), 21. 2 Joyce Kay, ‘It Wasn’t Just Emily Davison! Sport, Suffrage and Society in Edwardian Britain’, The International Journal of the History of Sport , 25:10 (2008), 1341-6; The Times (28 March 1914), 5. 3 The view taken by historians such as Beddoe, Back to Home , 8-32, and Martin Pugh, Women and the Women’s Movement in Britain, 1914-1959 (London, 1992), 72-100. 4 The view taken by recent historians, that the women’s movement continued in diverse and vibrant ways, see Beaumont, Housewives and Citizens ; Julie Gottlieb (ed.), Feminism and Feminists After Suffrage (London, 2015), and Pat Thane, Women and Citizenship in Britain and Ireland in the Twentieth Century (London, 2011). 5 Nicholson, “Like a man trying to knit”, 86. 6 Quoted in Macpherson, The Suffragette’s Daughter , 113; Morgan, Autobiography , 51. 7 The Graphic (11 September 1909); Belfast Newsletter (5 June 1933); Thanet Advertiser (4 December 1926); The Weekend Review (25 April 1931); Yorkshire Evening Post (12 May 1931). 8 WCA, Executive Committee and AGM Minutes (26 April 1936); Western Daily Press (11 June 1937). 9 British Pathé, ‘News in a Nutshell’ (16 June 1937, 923.10); Brisbane Sunday Mail (6 January 1935), 1. 10 Quoted in Macpherson, Suffragette’s Daughter , 103. 11 Julie Gottlieb and Richard Toye, ‘Introduction’, 5-12, and Adrian Bingham, ‘Enfranchisement, Feminism and the Modern Woman: Debates in the British Popular Press, 1918-1939’, in Gottlieb and Toye (eds), The Aftermath of Suffrage: Women, Gender, and Politics in Britain, 1918-45 (Basingstoke, 2013), 87-104. 12 The Manchester Guardian (20 October 1926), 12. Separate but Equal: Feminism Divides the Game