Cricket Witness No 4 - Women at the WIcket

95 Separate but Equal: Feminism Divides the Game as extremists, masculine or even lesbians. 3 The great gains of the interwar years, including equal suffrage, the relaxation of divorce laws and the expansion of girls’ education, only went some way to levelling the political scales, and discrimination remained widespread in employment, welfare and social freedoms. Yet while the suffrage movement spilt and was less visible, it did not disappear. The goal of gender equality diffused into new areas – party politics, the peace movement, trade unionism, pressure groups and popular women’s organisations. 4 Sport has traditionally not featured in these discussions, if mentioned at all by historians, but sporting bodies such as the Women’s Cricket Association (WCA) also sought sexual equality, even if they consciously avoided labelling themselves as feminists. Two models of women’s cricket existed in interwar England, but the divide between the English Women’s Cricket Federation and the WCA was as much about feminism as it was about class or regional differences. The Association’s commitment to maintaining a woman-only enclave for recreation and friendship, free of male influence or profit-making, was at odds with the model championed under the English Federation. Rather than attempting the often-fruitless task of opening women’s sections in existing men’s clubs, an issue still hampering the sport today, the Association carved their own safe space which offered women the freedom, as far as was possible, to be themselves unfettered by social constraints. Some women found cricket clubs an accepting space where their sexuality was not a cause for moral panic, but their commitment Nevill Cricket Ground, Royal Tunbridge Wells, 12 April 1913. A policeman stands guard over the charred remains of the pavilion after Suffragettes set it ablaze in the early hours. An example of how ‘Deeds not Words’ impacted the game before 1918. (LSE Women’s Library, 7JCC/0/1/143)