A Century in the Shadows

In focusing on the history of women sports coaches and on the evolution of a gendered view of coaching as a male activity, this text furthers our understanding of how societal constraints on female engagement in coaching manifested themselves between 1860 and 1960, how women managed to negotiate with, or circumvent, them, and what the implications might be for contemporary women coaches. Through its exploration of the life courses of female coaches, using archival and genealogical sources, over a century that saw a substantial increase in women’s participation in sport, the author extends his previous work on the history of sports coaching in Britain and adds significantly to the wider historiography regarding coaching and training.