Cricket Witness No 4 - Women at the WIcket

91 Workplace and Working-Class Women’s Cricket encouraged girls to take up cricket as she thought it superior to other summer sports – ‘beating our beloved tennis into a frazzle as a means of keeping a friendly spirit among a crowd of girls’ – and entirely suitable for women through its ‘grace’ and ‘elegance’. 53 Through restricting their play almost-exclusively to other CWS factories, teams could construct a distinctive identity and mentality more firmly. Cricket became a conduit for channelling worker solidarity. ‘Through their sport’, Mary May argued, ‘they may meet the employees of other works – the North meet and understand the South, the East and West, and by a cup-tie or a tournament the whole of the CWS family meet through the social life of the members of the family.’ The CWS heavily subsidised participation and travel for its women’s and men’s teams, and cricket was initially free for girls to play in some factories. 54 Women’s cricket, like men’s sports too, was seen to be a method of promoting working-class solidarity and empathy. It was a vehicle through which organisations hoped to inspire devotion and secure loyalty to their political and economic agendas. If cricket was thought to be capable of binding communities together, be it a class, company or political movement, then it was also capable of uniting women in search of cultural and physical liberation. Class and gender politics were not necessarily at odds: the Manchester CWS Women’s Cricket League affiliated to the WCA, and 45% of CWS sports club members were women. Mary May maintained CWS sport united its 46,000 employees and was evidence of the ‘true recognition of the equality of the sexes’. She urged readers to join women’s cricket and sports teams and defeat ‘the age-old complex of women who have been content to remain in the background, whereas men assert themselves… it is not lack of intellect or brains’. 55 Breaking down the socially constructed barriers women faced in sport, which usually centred around their presumed universal characteristics of submissiveness, frailty and passivity, could also serve to help the business and the Co-operative political movement. The growth of women’s cricket, therefore, was not only a new development in sport, or even just a social movement, but a product of class and gender politics, changing economic patterns and evolving theories of labour management. As women achieved greater political power in these years, organisations pitched for their loyalty through the game, as they recognised the sport’s ability to unite diverse communities.