Woman and Sport.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XLIV, Issue 5, 2 February 1910, Page 11

Woman and Sport.

What effect has sport had upon women physiologically? Opinions on the question differ much, even among those well qualified to judge, but on one point most are agreed, and that is that physical exercise makes for the encouragement of increased health and vigour in its followers, but that sport as it is most often indulged in by women has in it the power to do, and does much harm. There can be no doubt that the woman of to-day is a much finer creature, physically, than her great grandmother, for instance. Whether she is more fit to undertake her duty to the race is another, question. Dr. Arabella Kenealy. who has studied the question, says she is not. The power locked up in a developing girl, she says, is unavailable for her to use as talents—nature, for racial purposes has reserved a certain proportion of physical and mental forces, and these, if affected by over-much sport, must necessarily become less valuable. A well-known woman’s magazine is bringing out in a few days an article, that shows the evil effect of hockey playing on its feminine devotees, and though what it contains will not be news to many of us it is a matter that is deserving of some study. Passion for Sport. The trouble about women and their sport is that they so often indulge in it as a passion, and so overdo it. An hour and a-half’s hockey, for instance, may have a most beneficial effect on some—to others it works the greatest harm, weakening their hearts and overstraining various organs. The result would probably be different and more beneficial if hockey were more regularly indulged in, and not, as usually, only once a week. “Instead,” says a woman doctor, “of permitting the normal investment of

capacity to take place during the years of development, we violently prevent it by overstraining and by over-training, muscularly and mentally, our growing girls in order to lit them to compete with men.” A big question has arisen and been discussed more openly during the last few years, than it ever was before, if indeed such questions arose. What is woman’s duty to the race? Dr. Kenealy, like most enthusiasts, goes to an extreme that is likely to weaken the most potent of her arguments when she says: “It is in undifferentiated, unused, faculty that evolutionary development takes place, force expended being, of course, force lost.’’ If that were taken as a basis is it not reasonable to suppose that a somewhat colourless attitude on the part of women would result? It is a fact that no figures can dispute, that there are considerably more women in the United Kingdom (and Dr. Kenealy cannot speak for the colonies) than there are men. and so it is a matter of impossibility for all women to marry. And even granted that all wished to marry, which they don’t, and prepared themselves to make good wives and mothers they would, by that very training, unfit themselves for earning their daily bread, as many of them have to do. New Class of Women, If women, as a race, were the thoughtless. selfish and cowardly creatures that it pleases some writers to present them nowadays—hating the thought of maternity, withholding sympathy from fellow women who have fallen, too selfish to undertake marriage that will entail a sincere comradeship with her husband in good or evil times—then the outlook would be different, but no one can persuade mo that such is the case.