In Search of Women Athletes

Abstract

In the final year of the 20th century, television’s ESPN network conducted a survey that determined the 100 greatest athletes of the 1900s. Although any list can be critiqued for accuracy and fairness, noticeably absent were women athletes, who constituted just 8% of the list. Because ESPN’s list shades the way future generations will characterize the 20th century, criticism of ESPN’s list is of importance to sports scholars, historians, sports fans, and the American citizen as a whole. This article lists several possible reasons for the lack of women on the Top-100 list. However, the author ultimately argues that when analyzing history, the shaping of cultural events to fit collective memory often allows the person shaping the event to revert back to biases present in the day the events took place.