'Play With Us, Not Against Us': The Debate About Play Days in the Regulation of Women's Sport.

During the 1920s, women physical educators promoted play days as an alternative model of sport for women that emphasized participation over competition. Play days were special events where girls played a variety of games and sports in teams comprised of girls from different schools. Winning was not important to the success of the day but social activities were. Women physical educators believed this model would ensure that women's sport avoided the abuses found in men's athletics while staying within the boundaries of acceptable gender and class behaviour. The women's leadership worked diligently to market play days as the correct way for women to play sports. They were quite successful with schools and colleges but not in other sport settings. By the 1960s, social forces began to erode the barriers between the play day model and the competitive model. The legacy of play days was at best a mixed one. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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