Gerd von der Lippe

Norway

Introduction

One of the first sports federations to be organised in Norway was the Track and Field Federation (NTFF), in 1896. The Norwegian Handball Federation (NHBF) was formed several decades later, in 1937, during a period of growing demand among Norwegian females for increased sporting opportunities. It is not only the different historical periods of organisational development that are of interest here. There is the gendered nature of the two sports federations; for track and field was socially defined in Norway as a masculine sport while handball was considered appropriate for female participation.

This particular social construction of sport at the national level appears to have been generally accepted among the Norwegian population from the 1930s until at least the 1970s. But what is interesting is that while most national sports federations had clear lines of demarcation between feminine and masculine sports, at the local club level, these socially constructed boundaries were less rigid. But women who chose to participate at the club level in the `wrong' sport (that is, male) did so at their own peril. Historical evidence suggests that those women who engaged in the `wrong' sports, or in `proper' sports at the wrong time and place were likely to face ridicule in the major newspapers and magazines of the day. In this article I wish to pose the following two questions: How did females learn to choose the sports that were `theirs' and to avoid those that were for the men?1 Did they see themselves as active agents with the potential to change discriminatory gender constructions in sport?

In order to answer these questions, I conducted in-depth and open-ended qualitative interviews with four former female athletes. One woman participated in the `wrong' sport, (track and field) while the other three were active in the `proper' sport of handball. All four were active in their sports during the 1930s.2 In this paper, I utilise historical observations and statements made by the respondents in an attempt to relate a Gramscian feminist notion of hegemonic masculinity to Bourdieu's concept of symbolic power. A brief outline of female sports participation in Norway and important socio-economic factors provides the necessary historical background in which to situate the interviews.

The Social Historical Basis of the 1930s Female Sports Revolution

Prior to the 1930s in Norway, the dominant social consensus privileged the male physique as the `natural' body to participate in competitive sports. But any social historical construction of `the legitimate' must have juxtaposed to it, the explicit or implicit `illegitimate'. A content analysis of the media during the 1930s confirmed that it was the female body, particularly in competitive sport that was the illegitimate; however in carefully constructed, but paradoxical ways.3 On the one hand, there was a prevailing attitude that the mature female body lacked the necessary attributes of the male body, which left women less capable of competing in sport. On the other hand, this female inferiority was an issue of debate when matters of work, education, or access to leisure opportunities were considered.

My historical research4 suggests that the 1930s deserves to be called the age of the first Norwegian female sport revolution. Compared to other female sports revolutions, for example that in the United States,5 the Norwegian revolution was relatively late in developing. Interestingly enough, in the organisational development of workers' sport, the Norwegians were among the leaders and suggest a growing interest in participation among the different social classes. This development had an impact upon female participation as well. Membership in the Norwegian Worker Sport Federation (NWSF), established in 1924, increased from 12,321 in 1930 to 104,114 in 1940.6 By way of comparison, membership in the more politically conservative and larger Norwegian National Sports Federation (NNSF) also grew, from 105,699 to 299,942. Both organisations increased dramatically because of the many men and women who wished to participate in sport.

What is of concern for this article is the growing interest in sports participation among women and an awareness that the existing national organisations were incapable or unwilling to expand and democratise sporting opportunities as quickly as women would have wished. Arguably, the initiatives of the NWSF in arranging competitions for women in cross-country skiing, speed skating and track and field in the 1930s may have led to similar developments in the NNSF.7 In other words, in the 1930s' climate of political uneasiness associated with workers' sports organisations, the NNSF needed to deal with the growing demand for sporting opportunities for women or lose members to the NWSF. In particular, sports officials in gymnastics, tennis, swimming, and figure skating attempted to attract new female members. Consequently, gymnastics during this decade was transformed from a predominately male sport to one identified as female.

The historical evidence would suggest that there was more female participation in Norway in the 1930s than ever before. There was a sporting revolution in the sense that organised sports such as gymnastics were redefined as female and women were actively encouraged to participate in these redefined activities. At the same time, there was a growing appreciation among some women that any sport of their individual choosing was an appropriate activity. Modest numbers of young women dared to defy the social mores of the time and actively sought to participate in the masculine sports of track and field, speed skating, and cross country skiing.

Arguably it could be stated that sport is a mirror of society generally. Certainly the Norwegian sports situation in the 1930s suggested parallel equivalents in other aspects of Norwegian social, cultural, economic, and political life. Whereas women and the working classes were demanding a greater role in their sporting lives, a similar demand was being expressed in the political arena. For years the Norwegians had the political will continually to press for more autonomy from Sweden, with which it had maintained an uneasy political alliance from 1814 to 1905. By 1930 the Kingdom of Norway was a sparsely populated country with 2.8 million inhabitants and had extracted major concessions from Sweden over the years. Among the earliest concessions made by the Swedish government was to give Norway extensive control over domestic affairs and financial policy. In other words, one might compare the Norwegian government to that of the NWSF, the Swedish government to the NNSF.

The comparison can go further. Norwegian women, like women in most countries, fought literally and figuratively, to achieve the right to vote. The franchise that allowed Norwegian women to vote came in 1913. Norwegian men had been accorded this right as early as 1898. In 1921 the first woman was elected to the Norwegian National Assembly.8 The number of women representatives had increased to three by 1933. Like sports, politics was socially constructed as a male arena of activity.

However, sometimes technology and economic activity brings about an unintended change in the cultural sphere. Strong support can be made for this argument by looking at socio-economic factors from the 1930s. In general, in relation to their parents' generation, the 1930s Norwegian family had better equipped homes, higher levels of education, particularly among women, and the fashion industry sought practicality in design to meet the consumer demand and preferences of Norwegian women with increased disposable income. Consider the following: before the First World War, on average, summer clothes for women weighed 2-3 kilos. After the war the weight had dropped from three-quarters of a kilo to 1 kilo.9

Not only were women demanding an increased voice in economic and political matters. They were also a growing presence in matters of sexual reproduction. The fertility rate in Norway dropped from an average of five children per married couple in 1890 to 2.6 in 1940.10 The consequence was that while their domestic labour and parenting responsibility declined, women sought more opportunities in sport and leisure and to a lesser degree access to jobs in the wage labour sector. The economic implication was that personal clothing and sundries, as well as access to leisure activity would be purchased in the marketplace.

The development of the talkie, and its popularity in the film industry, is an excellent venue to demonstrate both the transformation and the commodification of leisure activities from the 1920s onwards. In Norway, the number of cinemas increased by 50 per cent in a scant five years from 1934 to 1939.11 Norwegian radio started broadcasting nationally in 1933-34, its primary mandate being to educate its listeners.12 The expanding machine-driven print technology, access to substantial pulp and paper resources, and a decrease in printing costs meant an explosion in popular press publications. Kiosks, which exclusively sold books, magazines, and newspapers, were built all over the country. The print industry differed from that of state radio in that the former had greater concern for the entertainment value of its publications. Coverage of topics from literature, films, and the world of work dominated. Women were a consumer group that also became attractive to the industry. The first weekly women's magazines were produced in this decade.13

Such an explosion in the media industry had unintended consequences. In the movies that they watched in droves, the young Norwegian population were exposed to dominate and marginalised concepts of masculinity and femininity that had their basis, not in Norway but in Hollywood and other western countries.14 Norwegian cultural traditions also were implicitly undermined by the content of the popular press. In 1937 for example, a full 80 per cent of the articles in the weekly magazines were lifted from English, Swedish and German magazines, and reproduced for the Norwegian public.15 Like the Hollywood movie, acceptable and unacceptable notions of masculinity and femininity, with an origin outside Norway, collided with the dominant social mores of the country.

It should be emphasised that there was a strong relationship between gender and class in this social/sporting revolution. It was not all women from all classes who participated. There was a definite class basis to the revolution. In fact, one of the many plausible reasons why the male NNSF officials may have had to expand the organisational operations to include female participation was the very fact that significant females in their personal lives demanded as much. It was the young, unmarried middle class women of the 1930s who enjoyed freedoms of which their mothers (and significantly, working class counterparts) could only dream. They drove cars, sometimes personally owned. They ignored traditional propri ety and travelled abroad with friends instead of their parents. Some challenged dominant values and practices of what it meant to be `a lady'. They discarded dresses and skirts for full-length trousers or shorts. They not only smoked cigarettes but also did so while out in public. Even though Norway had established equality of educational opportunity on some levels much earlier, by the 1930s more women were interested in pursuing male-dominated university degree programmes such as medicine or engineering. This latter group remained modest in size, however. In the December 1935 graduating class of 52 students in the faculty of medicine at the University of Oslo, there were only three women.16 Nonetheless, increasing numbers of middle class women furthered their education at university level; some interested in obtaining a liberal education only, others with the desire to enter the wage labour workforce. In fact the Norwegian concept of a gainfully employed female was first constructed in the 1930s.17

The class bias is important, for like many revolutionary movements, tensions not only existed between the dominant and marginalized but within the marginalized itself. In Norway, the latter worked itself out in the voluntary women's organisations. It was here that tensions concerning the concept of `a woman', and the appropriate female roles developed. As sociology might put it, the desire to retain notions of traditional femininity was closely related to a critique of modernity.

The organisational symbol of traditional womanhood was associated with the Norwegian associations for married women, Husmorforbundet, and for rural women (farmers' wives), Bondekvinnelaget. Not surprisingly, the opposition to these traditional symbols emerged in those voluntary associations favoured by the young middle class professionals. Most notable was Lærerinneforbundet, the female teachers' organisation. Less formally organised but no less important, was the opposition to traditional notions of womanhood that occurred each and every time that a female competed in organised sports. Before turning to the personal stories of four female athletes to see how they personally transformed or reproduced socially constructed notions of femininity, it is important to introduce Pierre Bourdieu's concept of symbolic power. This is necessary to demonstrate theoretically, the transformation/reproduction process in the personal life experiences of the athletes.

Symbolic Power: The Legitimisation of the `Natural'

According to Bourdieu the natural and social world appears to each and every person as a self-evident phenomenon.18 He goes on to note that in the routine flow of everyday life, power is seldom exercised as overt physical force. Rather, it is transmitted as a symbolic form and as such is endowed with a legitimacy that it would not otherwise have. As Bourdieu puts it, `symbolic power is an "invisible" power, which is "misrecognised" as such and thereby "recognised" as legitimate'.19 In the French sociologist's theory, the terms recognition (reconnaissance) and misrecognition (meconnaissance) have important roles to play: `they underscore the fact that the exercise of power through symbolic exchange always rests on a foundation of shared belief'.20 What Bourdieu means by this is that shared beliefs in everyday life, are deemed to be sensible and rational. Personal thoughts are taken for granted, because as aspects of social relations, they are interpreted as sensible and normal. He labelled this phenomenon doxa, that is, that which is beyond question, undiscussed, unnamed and which each agent tacitly accords by mere fact.21

For Bourdieu, symbolic power works effectively, because it presupposes certain values, which border on the level of unconscious thought. People may recognise or tacitly acknowledge the legitimacy of power, and hence fail to see that the hierarchy is an arbitrary social construction in the sense that, in principle any kind of legitimisation might have been put forward as long as it appeared to be natural and normal. The fact that these values privilege the interests of some groups more than others is often hidden from view.

In the case of the four athletes who were interviewed for this article, they did not see themselves as active change agents in transforming the arbitrary social constructions that created barriers between feminine and masculine sporting opportunity. Bourdieu's theory helps to explain how through different kinds of legitimisation, individuals are persuaded to accept or reject social rules of order. I will refer to those interviews carried out between 1992 and 1996 to explain this phenomenon shortly. First, it is important to situate the life experience of the athletes in the organisational structure of sport that they encountered.

Norwegian Track and Field in the 1930s

The Norwegian Track and Field Association was the third sport in the country to organise formally. Like its predecessors, until 1947, only males were allowed to participate in the sanctioned regional, national, and international competitions. As already noted, by the 1930s such gender discrimination was being questioned, by increasing number of female athletes who wished to participate in sanctioned competition. In response to this demand, some Oslo clubs introduced track and field groups for women. Among the leaders in this initiative was the Bækkelaget club.

By 1932, women were eager to have their status legitimated with the national federations. In that year, the women's question was submitted as an agenda item at the NTFF annual General Meeting. It was ignored, whereupon the Secretary of the Club requesting the item circumvented the national track and field body. He wrote a letter to the executive board of the Norwegian National Sports Federation (NNSF). In it he stated:

There are no laws or regulations in the Track and Field Federation which prohibit clubs from including female members as active competitors, and therefore we are of the opinion that these also must be under the protection and control of the national federation (NTFF).22

The top executive of Norwegian organised sports sided with the letter writer. It was the duty of the Track and Field Federation to organise women's track and field events. The latter maintained its reluctance to do so. The secretary of the NTFF replied in a follow-up letter:

We agree that female members are also included in our sport. Our national federation [NNSF] prefers that the NTFF undertake the administration of female sport. However, we are of the opinion that women ought to form their own federations, and indeed such an organisation has already been formed. In this respect, we want to focus on the unbearable situation that arises when both female and male athletes are training together on the same track... . The male coaches complain that the female athletes `conquer' such a large part of the track, and that the males have to take care of them.23

Given the reluctance to allow organisational autonomy for women in other countries, this was an astounding concession to Norwegian women. With the exception of a few short months in 1933, there had never been a Norwegian women's sports federation. That exception had been a matter of expediency so those Oslo athletes could take part in competitions in Stockholm and Götenborg (Sweden).

The response of the executive of the NNSF was predictable of those in power. They were not willing to relinquish their monopoly control over Norwegian sport. They cited historical precedent to support their argument. There should be no independent women's federation in track and field, because all branches of women's sports had previously been integrated into the male federations.24

After considerable pressure from the Oslo track and field clubs and the NNSF executive, the NTFF was persuaded in the autumn of 1933 to organise women's competitions. It led one club secretary to comment:

At last, we achieved what we have been fighting for, and the decision will be very important for the development of women's sports... . We congratulate the ladies on their accomplishment.25

As optimistic is the tone of the letter, the inclusion of female events in the organisation of track and field had minimal impact. There was little promotion of women's track and field per se, apart from some discussions about what events suited female athletes. This is therefore, an opportune moment to introduce the life experiences of athletes who lived the decision that was taken. I begin with the case of `Sigrid'.

`Sigrid'

Sigrid was born in 1915, into a lower middle-class household in the district of Nordstrand, Oslo. She joined in 1931, at the age of sixteen, the women's track and field group affiliated with the Bækkelaget club. Like many athletes, Sigrid joined because some of her best friends were also involved. When Sigrid quit, a few years later, it was because she had lost interest in the sport. While she was actively participating, the young Sigrid was among the top sprinters in the country (8.1 seconds at the 60 metre run).

The interview with Sigrid was revealing in several ways. Sigrid was conscious of the fact that she as a female athlete had no coach; that only once a year during her active training, did she compete outside of Oslo; and that the male club members had greater opportunities than she and the other female competitors experienced. She had little appreciation of the changing social attitudes that allowed her to compete in track and field. Nor was she to know that it was the Oslo clubs that had led the way in organising track and field for women. Sigrid would not know that two years after she began training at Bækkelaget the all-male executive of the NTFF `had in reality turned the women down'. Sigrid may, if she subscribed to the periodicals associated with her sport, have in 1935 read the following:

In my opinion, the Norwegian Track and Field Federation and Oslo Track and Field Region, ought to make all affiliated clubs include one female event in every competition that is arranged. The ladies are, however, totally abandoned by the men. This situation is unacceptable, and indicates that the central leaders are not interested in women's track at all.26

Finally, Sigrid would not knowingly understand that the prevailing negative attitudes among national leaders and male coaches towards female participation in track and field would intensify from 1933 onwards. Among those who spoke out against female participation in track and field was the Norwegian national coach Helge Løvland. Himself the winner of decathlon at the 1920 Antwerp Olympic Games, Løvland unabashedly declared that women ought to be excluded from competitions in several track and field events.27 As far as he was concerned, the aim of women's sport was to play and not to compete. In summary then, Sigrid had little understanding or appreciation of the active resistance to exclude females from track and field. For her it was `simply natural' to join in 1931 and drop out in 1933-34.

Sigrid's story is not meant to imply that she is a passive object to which symbolic power is applied. As Bourdieu qualifies it: `symbolic power requires, as a condition for its success, that those subjected to it believe in the legitimacy of power and the legitimacy of those who wield it'.28 For Sigrid, in her natural and social world, the male leaders of sport were people of authority who expressed reasonable attitudes. She accepted their decisions and believed them to be appropriate. Even when the circumstances puzzled her, as when only men were allowed to compete in regional and national championships, she remembers thinking: `There had to be, there was, some authoritative reason behind the decision, which I did not understand... (laughter)'. Her age meant that she was not privileged to these legitimate reasons: `I was, after all, only a young woman at that time'. 29 Sigrid's story is special since she was a participant in a sport not considered legitimate for women by the social mores of the day. We can now turn to those women who did participate in an acceptable female activity to compare their experiences with those of Sigrid. As before, I will situate their stories in the organizational imperatives of their chosen sport, handball.

Norwegian Handball in the 1930s

The Norwegian Handball Federation was established in 1937. Within two years handball was symbolised as a typical women's sport. Unlike Sweden and Germany, the game had been defined as a proper women's sport in Norway because of the difference in rules associated with Norwegian handball. The Norwegians had adopted the 7-player game that did not permit body contact. The Swedes and Germans, on the other hand, played with 11 players, in contests that permitted limited body contact. The presence of body contact meant that Swedish and German handball in the 1930s was characteristically seen as a male game. But there was also an important political reason for the interpretation of Norwegian handball as a female game. Quite simply, the Norwegian women were more successful internationally than their male counterparts. But it was not merely that the Norwegians won international matches; they were strong enough to compete on an equal basis with arch rival Sweden. The Norwegian men were not so fortunate. Inevitably the Swedish men defeated the Norwegians. In fact, the Swedish national team was often among the best teams in Europe.

These circumstances allowed the Norwegian female handball player to cultivate athleticism while maintaining an acceptable feminine image. The inevitable comparison between female handball players and track and field athletes was not long in coming. A 1939 Olso newspaper commented that:

We [still] see some [women] throwing the javelin and sprinting the 100m at `Stadion' and `Bislet', but fortunately most of them [the former female track and field athletes] have withdrawn from such nonaesthetical events.30

The image of handball as a female sport was considerable. From 1937 onwards, a full two thirds of the members of the NHBF were women. The newspapers continually hailed the international success of the women in contrast to the failures of the men. The first Norwegian championship and national team was organised for the women and not the men; completely out of step with the male sporting order of the decade. The only sector of handball that was not dominated by females was in the prominent and important executive positions, all of which were the domain of the men. It is in such a sporting structure that the three handball players participated. Let us turn to the stories of Berit, Liv, and Eva; all lower middle class women from Oslo.

`Berit', `Liv' and `Eva'

While track and field was one of the new sports for women at the beginning of the 1930s, by the end of the decade few women were involved. For Berit, a leader in her club handball section, track and field held a certain intrigue. In fact Berit might have competed in track and field in 1938, if she had any encouragement that was an acceptable sport for women. She did not and consequently, she and her friends clandestinely watched the NWSF female training sessions with fascination: `We stole away to peep at the ladies of the worker sports when they were training [at track and field]. This was not a sport for us... I envied them a little (laughter)'.31 The NWSF, in contrast to the NNSF, actively promoted women's track and field from 1924 until 1940.32 In fact, from 1928 onwards, Norwegian women could participate in the national worker championships.

Berit did not see herself as an active change agent jousting against the taken-for-granted images of women in sport. She did, however, want to encourage more females to take up the game of handball. Berit was particularly distressed to see women at her club give up a game that they obviously enjoyed. When Berit learned that it was the late practice time that was the most common reason for quitting the sport, she petitioned her club to change the practice time to 7 o'clock in the evening. Berit was told that it was impossible to get indoor facilities any earlier than the 10 o'clock time that the women had been given. Frustrated by this lack of consideration, the young handball player formed a new club. As she remembers it:

In the end I was so `fed up'reallyseeing young and fine women dropping out [of handball]. I knew they loved it. You see, handball was a new sport.... Gradually I realised I had a job to do (laughter).33

She succeeded. Many women who had dropped out returned to the sport, and several new players became involved as well.

The class basis of sport in the 1930s is evident in the ease with which dropouts returned to handball in comparison with track and field. For Liv, the second handball athlete, from the Bækkelaget club, this was because:

Track and field.. (pause), absolutely not a sport for me. Gymnastics, handball and down hill [skiing] were the natural sports for women before the [second world] war and (pause) tennis for the rich people.34

The last athlete was undoubtedly the most successful athlete of the four interviewees. Eva was born in Oslo in 1919, the only child of a consultant-father employed by a well-known Norwegian firm, Larsen & Lütken. Eva's mother, typical of her generation, was a housewife. At the age of 13, Eva had already been acknowledged as the unofficial Norwegian champion in cross-country skiing. Even at such an early age, her abilities far exceeded other female athletes. She might have done equally well in ski jumping, which she also enjoyed, but had given up the sport because her father thought it was too masculine. When Eva started playing handball in 1937, she was already an established international athlete. The previous year, at the Winter Olympics in Garmish-Partenkirchen, Germany, Eva had captured the bronze medal in the women's downhill ski event. If this were not impressive enough, upon joining her handball club, Eva also held four world records in speed skating and a further 85 Norwegian championship victories in tennis. By the time Eva retired from sport, she had won a total of 105 Norwegian championships in tennis, slalom skiing, speed skating and handball.

Not only was Eva considered an outstanding athlete (after the Second World War she was considered the best female handball player in Norway), she was also an adept administrator. In 1936 she began a women's training section in her Oslo club Grefsen. The following year her group began playing handball. During her illustrious athletic career, Eva was an outstanding athlete, occasional coach and effective sports club administrator. How is it that such an outstanding athlete never became active in track and field? As she put it, `No one [female] in my club did. I wanted to do well both in national and international competitionsThinking about it there was no backing from the [national] leaders of track and field'. This comment was made with a knowing nod of the head to be sure that I understood her. Eva knew that I had taken part illegally in an all-male event in track and field, and thus lost my place for a short time in 1972, as a national team member.35

Eva made it quite clear that she was most interested in playing and not in sporting politics.

I quit speed skating and slalom when they [the national leaders] did not send me to international competitions any more. Sport has to be fun; fights are not my cup of tea.36

Eva did not regard sport as a personal battlefield but rather as a place of energy and joy.

Two important observations should be made at this time. First, Sigrid and Liv were both active in the same club (Bækkelaget) but were members at different times in the 1930s. What is important about this fact is that if Sigrid had been an athlete at the end of the 1930s rather than at the first of the decade, she probably would have been competing in handball and not track and field. The opposite would be true for Liv. Second, Eva implicitly understood what were the important and unimportant sports as far as the national sports leaders were concerned. She did not participate in track and field because she sensed that these competitions were not taken seriously. Eva's perceptions were not mistaken. According to interviews with 14 former handball athletes and leaders in the communities of Oslo and Akershus, virtually no outstanding woman player women ever competed in track and field events between 1937 and 1940.37

Situating the Women's Stories in Theory

Hegemonic masculinity and symbolic power: In order to understand how power was exercised in any given society, Antonio Gramsci introduced the concept of hegemony. It is beyond the scope of this paper to delve into the theoretical basis of the term. What is important is that Gramsci recognized the important role played by social and cultural organizations and practices in mediating hegemonic ideologies and practices. But hegemony was not uni-directional in its impact. Therefore, these same organizations and practices also could be the cultural terrain on which emergent ideas and practices might develop.

Gramsci's notion of hegemony maintains that dominant groups in society exercise power, not through physical dominance, but through negotiation.38 In developing his concept, Gramsci resisted the idea that people were passive recipients of dominant cultural formations.39 Rather, the ways in which particular forms of hegemony were created depended upon the production and reconstruction of values and beliefs that supported established social relations and structures of power. But these values and beliefs had to be continually addressed. There was always the potential that they would be challenged, and perhaps replaced by other values and beliefs. Hegemony is therefore, never complete, because dominant ideas and practices are continual sites of contestation.

Organised sport is an excellent venue to understand hegemony. Sport is a conceptual battleground in which groups with conflicting interests and values contend for power. In the discussion thus far, it is clear that ideological struggles were taking place between the social classes and in the area of gender relations. Take for example, the concept masculinity. There are different types of masculinity.40 Not all men and women identify with exactly the same concept of the term. Consequently, male hegemony is not a simple male vs. female opposition. It is a complex and changing concept.41 During the 1930s there was a hegemonic masculinity in Norway that was embedded in the ideas and practices of being a Norwegian male and female. There is no parallel hegemonic femininity, because the intrinsic ideas of dominance is that of the masculine. Consequently, there are accepted and marginal ideas and practices of being female within the notion of hegemonic masculinity. Hegemonic conflict increasingly occurred when women demanded greater sporting opportunity. In their demands, the female athletes were implicitly questioning the notions of masculinity and femininity that were dominant in Norway at the time. These demands had to be met if hegemonic masculinity was to be maintained.

Because men held the positions of authority on the executive boards and important committees in track and field and handball in the 1930s, they had to be seen to be proactive in their approach to women's demands for greater sporting opportunities. In the case of Norwegian track and field in 1932-33, the leadership reluctantly agreed to integrate male and female competition in the sport. This was not their preferred decision but was a strategy to avoid losing administrative control of track and field. The overall sporting authority, the NNSF demanded increased opportunities for women, and the initiatives of the NWSF to include more women in its track and field competitions had to be taken seriously. Even then, at best, it was a minimal acceptance of female participation. Women could participate in local competitions but were still excluded from national championships. It was a reluctant compromise to avoid serious conflict.

Hegemonically, it was a decision that was continually undermined throughout the decade on the grounds that it was not in the best interests of women to participate in track and field, when there were so many other worthwhile sports for women, notably handball. Through so many ways, women and men came to understand that increased sporting opportunities for women were good but some activities were far better (handball) than others (track and field). And people were not coerced into accepting these beliefs. Rather, through constant re-negotiation they were won over to them. The individual was convinced that he/she was making a personal choice. Thus, Sigrid saw nothing unusual in joining a track and field group in 1931 because her friends were doing likewise. Dropping out of the sport in 1933-34 was nothing more than a change of interests. Berit and Liv chose to play handball in 1938. Berit also chose to play the game but was curious about those women who participated in track and field. If she had been aware of the Gramscian notion of hegemony, she might have dared to cross the ideological gender borders and participate in track and field. Eva, the outstanding athlete, truly believed that she freely left cross-country skiing and chose handball in 1937. As a dutiful daughter, she accepted her father's contention that ski jumping was a male sport. She planned to leave speed skating in 1940.42 In all cases, there was no explicit coercion but the taken-for-granted assumption that the personal choice made was the logical and correct one.

But there is another way of looking at these personal choices. How are people persuaded to recognise certain social formations as natural, logical, normal, or correct in the constant process of re-negotiation? Gramsci's deliberations are overly connected to strategies and practices related to party politics. One can visualise rational minds agreeing on different agendas and questions in such an organisational setting. But what about those decisions that are made in the everyday routine of life? I believe that Bourdieu's concept of symbolic power is a necessary addition to Gramsci's hegemony.

Mind and feelings, body and soul, agency and structure, individual and collective can be included in questions of symbolic power. Bourdieu's notion of symbolic power may be interpreted as invisible. It is therefore, both misrecognised and legitimated. In addition, the claim that the exercise of power through symbolic exchange rests on a basis of shared beliefs seems reasonable. We identify with a variety of different values in a tacit manner through socialisation. Many of these we interpret as natural and consequently they go unquestioned. There is little logic in questioning attitudes or beliefs that are self-evident. Most people are not actively involved in the conflicts in sport, so why should they think about power and dominance as they relate to sport?

None of the former athletes who were interviewed saw themselves as active agents with the capacity to change the borders between accepted and unaccepted female sports. But both Berit and Eva believed they could change attitudes around issues of lesser importance. Berit wanted to increase the number of young handballers in the spring of 1940, but not in 1938. It took some time, she said, to dare think and plan to change the training hours from 10 o'clock p.m. to 7 o'clock in the evening. Initially she did not recognise the invisible power that made her passive. The legitimisation of the status quo seemed natural. What was unnatural was to question the decisions of the male sport leaders and to develop a counter strategy to assist more women to play handball. Because of her dedication to the sport of handball, she managed after two years of thinking about the situation, to contradict, both in word and deed her club leaders.

Paradoxically, Berit did not believe that she could change the prevailing attitudes so that track and field would be regarded as an acceptable sport for women in the 1930s. Marginal ways of being feminine were instead to be found in cross-country skiing, and speed skating. In fact, female handball athletes considered women who insisted on participating in track and field, particularly in the second half of the 1930s, deviant. The threat of being associated with a known symbol of masculinity (track and field participation) and therefore, contradicting the order of hegemonic masculinity seemed too strong to these women. When Berit formed her own club in 1940, neither she nor her friends attached a masculine label to her act, because they saw it `only as a handball club for women'.43 According to Berit, male leaders in the handball federation wanted a larger membership. Therefore, some of them even supported her initiatives. In this way she was able to introduce emerging female practices within the Handball Federation in 1940.

Eva's experience creates a problematic in the term symbolic power. Acceptable and unacceptable female sports were not a doxa for her, because she had been involved in ski jumping, cross-country skiing and speed skating. Further, she had read articles about herself and other women who freely participated in these masculine sports. Within the logic of hegemonic masculinity, she had quit two of the sports and planned to quit the third. She accepted the law of social order in the sense that she did not fight against it, although she thought it was stupid. She was not afraid to be labelled masculine because she had experienced outstanding success in the guise of world records and international victories. Since she was taller, stronger and mentally tougher than the average Norwegian man and because she did not consider herself a female sex object, she did not worry what others in sport felt about her involvement. She had already experienced marginalisation in the sports of speed skating and cross-country and was intelligent enough to recognise the codes of exclusion and inclusion in top level sport. She felt unable to alter the attitudes of male leaders towards the inclusion of outstanding female athletes in traditional masculine events. When she quit ski jumping, she was too young to make her own decision and relied on the decision of her father. Quitting cross-country skiing was her own choice but was heavily influenced by a slanderous article in the most influential sports magazine in Norway in 1933. Eva had won a 6-kilometre ski race by a margin of six minutes over her nearest rival. The margin of victory was so great that a male leader of a local club near Oslo implied that Eva might have cheated.44 His logic, he told the magazine reporter, was that it was impossible for women to ski as fast as Eva's time would suggest she was capable of. Although the editor supported Eva, the accusation caused her to reflect on the attitude which viewed female bodies as lacking in relation to male bodies: `It was no fun any more[the insinuation that she may have cheated] I was running on my skies, while the others were sort of walking (smiling).'45

Dropping out of ski jumping can be interpreted as an act subject to symbolic power, but leaving cross-country skiing must be interpreted differently. It was not natural for Eva to quit this sport or contemplate quitting speed skating. Rather, they were acts of necessity. Therefore, I do not interpret her as an individual subject to symbolic power in this context. In addition, she had challenged the logic of hegemonic masculinity in leadership positions when she was an active club coach in handball. In this way she saw the potential to develop emergent ideas of female leadership. As an administrator of the women's group in `Grefsen', she arranged several competitions successfully. Her sporting capital had increased both after her bronze medal in the Olympics, and her world records in speed skating. Eva was highly respected by journalists and sports people of both sexes. If she had regarded sport as a site of conflict in which her job was to recruit greater numbers of females into traditional masculine sports, she would probably have continued with these sports. Her sense of logic told her that this was not her battle. She preferred to enjoy her time and concentrate on top level sport.

Hegemony: Borders Between Bourgeoisie and Worker Sports in the 1930s

Antonio Gramsci had neither sport nor gender in mind when he developed his concept of hegemony. It was left to others, most notably Carrigan et al in 1985.46 Gramsci did point out, however, that class struggle is not simply about economic and political questions but is also cultural. The fight for hegemony takes place in all areas of society, although ordinary people are not aware of this, because they are not normally concerned with the reproduction of the social order. That is the task of politicians and leaders of business. Gramsci's focus is on the dynamic and flexible nature of political alliances. To act according to the correct attitudes and practices was a strategy to retain dominance. In this way the logic of hegemonic masculinity is highly instrumental.

If we apply Gramsci to sports, we can also introduce Bourdieu's term `field'. Sport may be regarded as one field and politics as another. A field may be understood as a structured space of positions in which the positions and their interrelations are determined by the distribution of different kinds of resources.47 The Norwegian National Sports Federation (NNFS) may be regarded as a field, with the federations of track and field and handball as two different sub-fields. The Worker Sports Federation (NWSF) is interpreted as another field from 1924-40.48 In 1930 the number of members in NWSF and the NNFS increased dramatically, as we have seen.49 A field and a sub-field are seen as sites of conflict. Here agents try to maintain or alter the distribution of the forms of capital specific to it.

In line with Judith Lorber's theory, gender in this context may be interpreted as an institution that establishes patterns of expectations for individuals, orders the social processes of everyday life and is further built into fields and sub-fields of society, such as family, sports and federations.50 In the world of track and field in Norway in 1930s, Sigrid wanted to compete in running and she took part wherever possible. The first years she enjoyed the minor contests at the local sports meets. She relied on the male administrators to make the decisions concerning her participation. When the club leaders grew frustrated with the lack of support for female participation, Sigrid and her friends stopped, without being aware of the processes that led to their decision.

Democratic traditions were weakly integrated in the Norwegian Track and Field Federation in the 1930s. This situation indicates a parallel to Gramsci's political field in Italy. Where Gramsci is concerned with party politics and the effects of mass strikes, Bourdieu's interest lies in how agents unconsciously incorporate processes of dominating values into their mind and bodies. Sigrid chose track and field and then dropped out some years later, because she followed her friends. Had she been ambitious, she might have changed clubs, when the interest in track and field at Bækkelaget declined. She did not, however, and married soon after.

As a member of the NNSF, Sigrid could have in principle, also joined the track and field groups associated with the NWSF. Again, she did not, primarily because the lines of demarcation lines between middle class and working class cultures were very difficult to cross in the field of sports in Norway at the beginning of the 1930s. Sigrid's friends were not from the working classes, although she did not reflect about that. For her to play sports with strangers was inconceivable.

Male national leaders of her sport were the authorities; they were knowledgeable and she trusted them in matters of sport. If she had been interested in a sporting career, she may have been more likely to question the gender politics of sport. She did not reflect on her misrecognition of the symbolic power fights, because she did not see it. The fact that track and field was first and foremost for men appeared natural to her.

Berit and Liv had their sporting careers in handball. They were both on the national team in the 1940s. For both of themdirectly and indirectlythe choice of sports was limited to accepted female practices. Neither they nor Liv questioned the demarcation line between accepted and unaccepted sports. Handball, gymnastics, and down hill skiing were the natural sports for Liv. Most of the handball women did not compete in track and field between 1937 and 1940. When asked why, the opinions expressed during interviews suggested a strong delineation between acceptable and non-acceptable sports for middle class women. For these women track and field was one of the non-acceptable activities. This may be interpreted as the hegemonic logic in sport at the time. Sigrid, Berit and Liv did not reflect seriously on the situation, because it seemed so natural. What we do not see, we tend to regard as absent and non-existing. Symbolic power can only be exercised with the complicity of those who do not want to know that they are subject to it or even that they themselves exercise it.

This is not to say that no middle class female athletes acted heretically and took part in track and field after the mid-thirties. They were, however, very few and seemed to be even more marginalised than those at the beginning of the 1930s.

The case of Eva is different. She had felt and thought about what it was like to be involved in traditional masculine sports. Although she might be interpreted as subject to symbolic power when she dropped out of ski jumping, she quit cross-country skiing and was planning to quit speed skating in 1940, because she wanted to succeed in national and international competitions. This logic can be interpreted as an element in her strategic plan to compete in top level sport in federations, which did not discriminate female athletes. She would have had the opportunity to compete in speed skating in the workers' sports federation, but she did not want to leave her club, Grefsen.

Middle class sports were the hegemonic ones in relation to worker sports in numbers of members, historical facts, records, money, media and sporting capital.51 The more liberal attitudes towards accepted femininities in the workers' sports groups can be interpreted as marginal in relation to the attitudes of Sigrid, Berit and Liv, whereas Eva's attitude seemed more in line with the philosophy espoused in workers' sport clubs. Her positiona woman and top athlete in middle class sportmade her chose handball in 1937. Her decision was not made because handball was an accepted female sport or because she wanted to look sexy and feminine, but because handball provided the opportunity to compete in top level competition. There was also a pragmatic reason for her decision. Eva was interested in sports administration and was to become from 1962-66, the President of the Executive Board, Norwegian Handball Federation; the first woman to gain such a position.

Summary and Comments

The critiques of Bourdieu are several.52 He is labelled a structuralist in the sense that his agents are too strongly tied to their attitudes and values of their past. 53 He might be interpreted in this way in relation to some of his terms. His concept of symbolic power, on the other hand, seems to give potential for change of practice, if the term is tied to lived experience. This was the case with Berit. In the end she did not want to attend handball practices as late as 10 o'clock in the evening. This was too late for her and particularly young women. When her old club did not want to change the training hours, she left her club and formed a new one. Eva was an international athlete from 1936 and wanted to compete in Europe. When she was unable to do this in speed skating, she thought of leaving this sport. Her choices were made consciously, calculating all the important possibilities and consequences. Therefore, she chose handball, both as a top athletethe best in the country after the Second World Warand later as a coach and later as a top administrator. She was an active agent who helped to make handball respected by athletes, leaders and journalists. To be subjected to symbolic power is not discovering the alternatives in a conscious way, but copying friends or acting in accordance with the will of other role models without asking why. Sigrid may be interpreted as subjected to symbolic power when she quit track and field. So might Berit, who despite her interest in the sport never took the opportunity to participate in it.

The emphasis in this paper has been on the experiences of Sigrid and Eva. But the choices made by Berit, and Liv are also relevant. All of these personal choices were made within the organisational history of women's track and field and handball. Some would argue that the evidence is too sparse to relate to theoretical perspectives like Gramscian hegemonic masculinity. My position is similar to that of John Sugden and Alan Bairner, in that analysis ought to be grounded in lived experience and ongoing fieldwork.54 This I have tried to do. I have not analysed the empirical data in relation to the Norwegian state and potential fragmentation within the state. Instead, I have used perspectives from feminist theories and tied this loosely to the concept of hegemonic masculinity and Bourdieu's term symbolic power. For some this may be a dilemma because I purposely wished to include research strategies from both sport history and sport sociology. The result might be interpreted as a bastardian attempt for those who do not agree with this inclusion. They get neither history nor sociology. In this sense some historians may read this article as a theoretical exegesis with little empirical data, while some sociologists might find too much empirical data from a small northern country. My objective was to address this article to researchers who see the potential of primary source material tied to theoretical perspectives, both traditional and new ones. Primary source material from Norwegian sport history was the point of departure. This needs more elaboration, but it is a start.

Notes

1 Lippe, von der, G., 1997. Mostly female handball athletes are interviewed. All of them chose this sport either because it seemed `natural' or because their friends or sisters did. The questions in that research dealt mainly with the body cultures of the female athletes; their experiences in training and competition as well as the attitudes of the male leaders and coaches to female sports. Bourdieu's perspectives on symbolic power were not in focus at that time. The questions of this paper came out unplanned during the interviews with four of the female athletes, and are not published before.

2 I planned to present two interviews with former female track and field athletes, but one of them did not allow me to publish her answers. She thought they were too critical towards track and field. I have interviewed another athlete from Oslo in the same sport in 1980. Today I have only my comments from that interview. These confirm that the central leaders did not want to include females in the 1930s. Lippe, von der,G., 1980, p.94.

3 SportsManden, 1930-1939, Aftenposten, 1930-1939.

4 Lippe, von der, 1993/94; 1997.

5 Twin, 1979, pp.27-9.

6 Lippe, von der, 1996, 136.

7 Walking for women started at the very end of the 1920s, while handball started in 1937. A few female athletes competed in track and field in Oslo in 1911, but not for long.

8 Skard et al., 1983, p.91.

9 Goksøyr and Strøm, 1945, p.115.

10 Moen, 1988, p.13, 18.

11 Helle, 1998, p.56.

12 Ibid, p.52.

13 Engelstad, et al., 1989, pp.165-6.

14 Blom and Sogner, 1999, p.292.

15 Ibid., p.163.

16 From a picture on the wall of my house, in which I grew up. My mother was one of the three women.

17 Blom and Sogner, 1999, p.292.

18 Bourdieu, 1977, pp. 168-9.

19 Bourdieu, 1992.

20 Ibid.

21 Bourdieu, 1977, p.169.

22 Thorhaug Idrettsforening Meddelelsesblad, 1932.

23 The Norwegian Track and Field Federation, 1933: Letter to the board of the Norwegian National Federation of Sports, 22 June.

24 The reason for this policy of integration is first and foremost a question of time. Norwegian female competitive sport started at a later period in Norway than in England, France, Germany and USA.

25 Torshaug Idrettsforening Meddelesblad, 1933, no.8.

26 Torshaug Idrettsforening Meddelesblad, 1935, no.7.

27 Løvland, 1938, pp.90-2. (He used other concepts than I did.)

28 Bourdieu, 1992.

29 Interview with `Sigrid', December 1996.

30 Folke, 1939.

31 Interview with `Berit', May 1993.

32 AIF (short for worker sports), 1927: Beretning om Arbeidernes Idrettsforbunds virksomhet i tiden fra landsmøtet 1926 til landsmøtet 1927, Oslo: Forlagstrykkeriet:12. (The Archives of the worker movement).

33 Interview with `Berit', May 1993.

34 Interview with `Liv', May 1993.

35 Lippe, von der, 2000a, forthcoming.

36 Interview with `Eva', June 1992.

37 Except for one of the young athletes from 1937 till 1940.

38 See for instance Clarke and Critcher, 1985; Gruneau, 1983; Hargreaves (ed.), 1982; Hargreaves, 1986; Hargreaves, 1994, pp.21-4; Lippe, von der, 1997, pp.42-7.

39 Hargreaves, 1994, p.22.

40 Carrigan et al, 1985.

41 Hargreaves, 1994, p.23.

42 She left international speed skating competitions soon after 1945. Speed skating for women was no event during the Winter Olympic Games in Oslo in 1952. If Norwegian central leaders had wanted to back female athletes, they could have included them in the games.

43 In a study on medical texts the term `masculine' might be interpreted as a metaphor in order to discipline women to do accepted sports. Lippe, von der, (2000b, forthcoming)

44 SportsManden, no. 33, 1933.

45 Interview with `Eva', June 1992.

46 Carrigan et al.,1985.

47 Bourdieu, 1992, p.14.

48 Lippe, von der, 1996, p.133.

49 Ibid, p.136.

50 Lorber, 1994, P.1.

51 Sporting capital is here for instance knowledge about sports that is regarded as important by people of the dominating cultures.

52 Bourdieu and Wacquant, 1992.

53 Bourdieu is often criticized to be a structuralist in the sense that the actions of individuals are being overly static and `closed', and thus leaving little room for change and resistance. See Bourdieu and Wacquant, 1992, pp.79-83. Bourdieu admits here that this might be a sensible interpretation in some contexts. Anyhow, to use Bourdieu on historical data might seem less problematic than on sporting practices in late modernity or postmodernity.

54 Sudgen and Bairner, 1992, pp.154-66.

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