Presented by: Robert Hess
Academic interest in the history of women’s football is burgeoning. This attention is not only apparent in a growing number of articles, books, and postgraduate theses dealing with studies in and across all the world’s major codes, but it is also evident in recent exhibitions and displays of material culture associated with the women’s game. However, the documentation of women’s football is still in its infancy and there remain substantial gaps in the theory, knowledge and understandings of when, why and how the various codes of women’s football emerged, developed and sometimes stagnated in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. In this paper, the main focus revolves around a major case study drawn from the recollections and memorabilia of a Myra MacKenzie, a participant with the Carlton Ladies Football Club in 1933. The particular code in question is Australian Rules football, and observations related to the sometimes problematic and ‘hidden’ nature of biographical evidence associated with female footballers will be used to draw conclusions, provoke discussion and set challenges relevant to all scholars in the sport history community.
Article © Rob Hess
