Marathon Women and the Corporation

Marathon Women and the Corporation Pamela Cooper Women were not unwelcome in the Boston Marathon back when entrants numbered fewer than one thousand. Children and dogs often ran alongside the competitors for a bit; like them, a woman runner would be considered a particularly enthusiastic spectator, carried away by the excitement of the race. As long as she was not an official entrant, as long as her finishing time was not recorded, the woman runner posed no threat and encountered few problems.1 When Kathrine Switzer defied this proscription, running with a number and trying for an official time in the 1967 Boston Athletic Association Marathon, she demanded sanction and equality as a woman marathoner. She continued to participate in every stage of the campaign for the highest level of marathon competition, an Olympic event. The first women's Olympic marathon in 1984 marked the culmination of the process of the institutionalization of the women's marathon. That is, the women's marathon derived from a socially sanctioned activity and had an identified pool of potential competitors. In addition to adopting the pattern of rules, bureaucracy, quantification, and record keeping that developed as an integral part of modem sports, the women's marathon had acquired other attributes necessary to its recognition as an institution: wide participation, a tradition of methodology in training, a system of disseminating information on participation and training, the specialization of track and crosscountry runners who moved up to the marathon, and a mythology. The women's marathon served a number of social functions, contributing to the health of its practitioners and to their espousal of feminist precepts. Finally, the women's marathon attracted industrial and political support that provided financing and power. Corporate backing, particularly that of the international cosmetics giant, Avon Products, Inc., gave the women's marathon the global influence and prestige to challenge another major transnational corporation, the International Olympic Committee, and to emerge as an institution. My presentation of the women's marathon as a sport institution is derived from Allen Guttmann's and Melvin Adelman's models of modern sport. I have also used Steven Riess's discussion of the effects of urbanization on sport, and Stephen Hardy's work on the importance of business and economic history to, and within, the development of sport.2 The derivation of my synthesis is presented in table 1. The relationship of the components of sport institutionalization is shown on table 2. © 1995 JOURNAL OF WOMEN'S HISTORY, VOL. 7 NO. 4 (WINTER) 1995 Pamela Cooper 63 Table 1. Derivation of the model of sport instututionalization Hardy Riess Activity Sport ideology Guttmann Secularization Pool (spatial & Equality demographic) Services Specialization Rationalization Bureaucracy Quantification Records Goods Sports facilities Municipal & urban political machines Adelman Synthesis Activity Sanction Role differentiation Specialization Rules Organization Competition Statistics Information Rationalization Bureaucracy Major competitions Statistics & records Information & mythology Industrial & economic support Government support Sources: Melvin A. Adelman, A Sporting Time: New York City and the Rise of Modern Athletics (Chicago, 1986), pp. 3-11; Allen Guttmann, From Ritual to Record: The Nature of Modern Sports (New York, 1978), pp. 16-26; Stephen Hardy, "Entrepreneurs , Organizations, and the Sport Marketplace: Subjects in Search of Historians," Journal of Sport History 13 (Spring 1986): 17-20; Steven A. Riess, City Games: The Evolution of American Urban Society and the Rise of Sports (Chicago, 1989), pp. 3-5. 64 JOURNAL OF WOMEN'S HISTORY Winter Table 2. The relationship of the components of sport institutionalization Activity Sanction \ Tradition Information Mythology Social Function Pool Participants / Rationalization Bureaucracy Specialization Quantification Records / Support from industry and government Institutionalization Sanctioning the Activity, Creating the Pool All games, contests, and sports begin with sanction, the societal endorsement of an expression of ludic activity such as running, jumping, or throwing. In From Ritual to Record: The Nature of Modern Sports, Allen Guttmann contrasted the sacred nature of ancient sports with the secularity that is an identifying characteristic of modern sports. In ancient times, activities might become sports by ascribing religious significance to them or by giving them a place in religious ceremonies. In modern times a sport is often sanctioned by ascribing to its practice effects that will benefit society, what Stephen Hardy...