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Game, Set, Match: Billie Jean King and the Revolution in Women's Sports
When Billie Jean King trounced Bobby Riggs in tennis's Battle of the Sexes in 1973, she placed sports squarely at the center of a national debate about gender equity. In this winning combination of biography and history, Susan Ware argues that King's challenge to sexism, the supportive climate of second-wave feminism, and the legislative clout of Title IX sparked a women's sports revolution in the 1970s that fundamentally reshaped American society.While King did not single-handedly cause the revolution in women's sports, she quickly became one of its most enduring symbols, as did Title IX, a federal law that was initially passed in 1972 to attack sex discrimination in educational institutions but had its greatest impact by opening opportunities for women in sports. King's place in tennis history is secure, and now, with Game, Set, Match, she can take her rightful place as a key player in the history of feminism as well. By linking the stories of King and Title IX, Ware expla
296 pages, Hardcover
First published February 3, 2011
12 people are currently reading
180 people want to read
About the author
Susan Ware
39Ìýbooks16ÌýfollowersSusan Ware, celebrated feminist historian and biographer, is the author of American Women’s History: A Very Short Introduction and Letter to the World: Seven Women Who Shaped the American Century, among other books. She is the editor of American Women’s Suffrage: Voices from the Long Struggle for the Vote, 1776â€�1965 and is Honorary Women’s Suffrage Centennial Historian at Radcliffe’s Schlesinger Library.
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Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews
July 16, 2014
Review first posted on BookLikes:
Almost exactly a year ago I read and reviewed a little known book written by seven-times Wimbledon champion Dorothea Lambert Chambers on Lawn Tennis for Ladies.
Chambers' book was published in 1910.
It is both remarkable and incredibly sad that Billie Jean King still had to battle with the same (if not worse) sexist bullshit that Chambers tried to fight 50+ years earlier, that only a few decades ago the idea of women engaging in sports, or even exercise, was a cause of social pariah and in need of justification. There is still a lot of work to be done today for women athletes to be recognised on an equal level as male athletes, but what Ware describes in quite detailed statistics is just incredible: that it took the enactment of Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972 (in the US) to enable women to receive athletic scholarships from universities and thus a more equal opportunity to access higher education.
The sponsor of the Amendment, Senator Bayh summarised a prevailing attitude towards women in higher education as follows:
"We are all familiar with the stereotype of women as pretty things who go to college to find a husband, go on to graduate school because they want a more interesting husband, and finally marry, have children, and never work again. The desire of many schools not to waste a 'man's place' on a woman stems from such stereotyped notions. But the facts absolutely contradict these myths about the 'weaker sex' and it is time to change our operating assumptions."
So, what has the change in legislation to do with Billie Jean King?
Well, Ware uses the backdrop of social history as a canvas to draw out a biography of Billie Jean King in which the author emphasizes the resistance and sexism King encountered and how she and her husband played a vital role in becoming lobbyists for gender equality in sports.
Ware, in my opinion, is not very successful in combining the two aspects of social and legal history and biography in this book. Apart from Ware's over-emphasis on King's "identity issues" (i.e. her sexuality), the main issue with Ware's attempt - which had me rolling my eyes continuously throughout the book - was that her writing seemed to want to attribute the shift in social attitudes towards women's sports entirely to Billie Jean King. It is only in the closing chapters of the book that Ware pays tribute to other leading athletes and sports promoters who supported the movement for equality.
However, the book is still a fantastic exploration of the legal and social history of the USA, and the aspects of trying to legislate for equality in education.
Almost exactly a year ago I read and reviewed a little known book written by seven-times Wimbledon champion Dorothea Lambert Chambers on Lawn Tennis for Ladies.
Chambers' book was published in 1910.
It is both remarkable and incredibly sad that Billie Jean King still had to battle with the same (if not worse) sexist bullshit that Chambers tried to fight 50+ years earlier, that only a few decades ago the idea of women engaging in sports, or even exercise, was a cause of social pariah and in need of justification. There is still a lot of work to be done today for women athletes to be recognised on an equal level as male athletes, but what Ware describes in quite detailed statistics is just incredible: that it took the enactment of Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972 (in the US) to enable women to receive athletic scholarships from universities and thus a more equal opportunity to access higher education.
The sponsor of the Amendment, Senator Bayh summarised a prevailing attitude towards women in higher education as follows:
"We are all familiar with the stereotype of women as pretty things who go to college to find a husband, go on to graduate school because they want a more interesting husband, and finally marry, have children, and never work again. The desire of many schools not to waste a 'man's place' on a woman stems from such stereotyped notions. But the facts absolutely contradict these myths about the 'weaker sex' and it is time to change our operating assumptions."
So, what has the change in legislation to do with Billie Jean King?
Well, Ware uses the backdrop of social history as a canvas to draw out a biography of Billie Jean King in which the author emphasizes the resistance and sexism King encountered and how she and her husband played a vital role in becoming lobbyists for gender equality in sports.
Ware, in my opinion, is not very successful in combining the two aspects of social and legal history and biography in this book. Apart from Ware's over-emphasis on King's "identity issues" (i.e. her sexuality), the main issue with Ware's attempt - which had me rolling my eyes continuously throughout the book - was that her writing seemed to want to attribute the shift in social attitudes towards women's sports entirely to Billie Jean King. It is only in the closing chapters of the book that Ware pays tribute to other leading athletes and sports promoters who supported the movement for equality.
However, the book is still a fantastic exploration of the legal and social history of the USA, and the aspects of trying to legislate for equality in education.
April 25, 2018
I was, uncomfortably, stuck on a plane en route to our family Spring Break recently, yearning to be free to move, so I watched a movie about Billie Jean King, naturally. Then the memories of her and the Battle of the Sexes flooded in. I was so geared up in 1973 when she won. Planned it out, stayed up late, etc. I forgot how momentous her victory was, politically. I also forgot about Title IX. Title IX was used (mostly? forcibly) to fund separate but equal physical education opportunities for girls in the US starting in the 70s. I believe I, and my sisters nationwide, benefitted tremendously from that bit of legislation that was nearly overlooked. Ware made a valid, yet arguable, point that Title IX did wonders for girls� sports while keeping them mostly segregated from boys.
We, sisters and bros, warmed up together in PE but team sports were gendered. Segregation in sports ultimately, maybe allows many boys to reach their potential while the best, most promising girls cannot. Ware also thinks separation lead to increasing emphasis on sheer strength and bulk in male dominated sports like football. I remember being able to best the boys in elementary and middle school in everything but upper arm strength. Had I continued to workout with the boys, who knows? Not gonna play football with the boys but swimming, tennis, sailing�.
My public school PE experience, confirmed by friends on social media, was incredible. We girls all felt challenged and supported. I am still into fitness, in large part thanks to my schooling. I LOVE that I was trained in elementary school by an older, heavy, unathletic white guy who would get no sympathy today. He made angels sing on the gym floor. We ran around and around for him, excelled in the Presidential Physical Fitness challenges, played gym hockey after school, climbed ropes, square danced and did The Hustle. None of this makes sense, stereotypically. Also, I was blessed with two remarkable female coaches in Junior High who went on and beyond for us. I’m guessing one or both were in the closet. I still can’t assess the human touch vs government intervention on this one (most probably the latter let the former shine). But we surely must have benefitted from good policy.
Ware expresses decidedly mixed feelings for BJK. Like she was neither intellectual nor dogmatic and she, maybe, benefitted too much personally from her support of girls and women. Ware comes across as a first and third wave feminist while BJK is of the second. My temperament and life experience lands me firmly in the second wave, too. I respect the First Wave. The Third Wave seems to be inviting an infantilization of women. The third wave loudmouths seem to be undoing the progress the First made. I don’t place Ware in that subset at all.
An acquaintance from Argentina quipped to me in the 1990s that soccer (futball) never took off in the US because Title IX took resources away from boys. HAHAHA. Intuitively, without reading up on this, I know soccer eventually made its way across the US BECAUSE girls were discovering it along side their brothers. Soccer is a family sport here. Not to mention, immigrants (legal or otherwise) carted over their love of the game and helped make things happen here.
“I think the reason we [Billie and her pro baseball bro Randy] are here today is that our parents did not live through us; they stood behind us� I am doing the same but my kids are not sporty! What am I missing?
“From the start she had an outsider’s [class, gender, then sexuality] sense that made her want to shake up the game from its country-club tonyness and make it more of a people’s sport.�
As a child of a very structured household, BJK faced a world where “the rules all started to change, and it seemed there weren’t any rules left. {She} tried to go with the flow, but always seemed…at the front of the line.�
“As a popular sports superstar, BJK quickly moved beyond just tennis to become a symbol for something even bigger: women’s rights and women’s changing roles in society.�
BJK “grasped something that second-wave feminism often missed—that sports are politics and thus an integral part of the struggle for women’s liberation.� I think Ware means First Wave Feminism?
Getting involved in Title IX
For females and males to play sports on equal terms, it took “education, advocacy, political engagement, and even entrepreneurship. Just as she had done in the Battle of the Sexes, BJK dovetailed her personal and professional priorities with building support for women’s sports in the society at large..�
Beyond Title IX
Coed sports. “’Separate but equal� means women will always be second-class citizens in sports.� BJK
“Could this hyper emphasis on male size and strength be a reaction to the inroads of women in sports?� Mariah Burton Nelson, “The stronger women get, the more men love football.�
Ware offers suggestions on “how gender could be deemphasized in sports� on p. 175.
“More than 35 years of Title IX have shown what the female body is capable of—pretty much anything that the male’s is. Ironically, Title IX has also made it significantly harder to envision such a brave new [coed] athletic world precisely because sports revolution it sparked unfolded in a an athletic system so rigidly divided by gender. Reconciling these dual legacies—the unleashing of women’s athletic potential versus the inadvertent (or perhaps not so inadvertent) reinforcement of sex segregation in sports—will be a major challenge as the women’s sport revolution continues to evolve.�
We, sisters and bros, warmed up together in PE but team sports were gendered. Segregation in sports ultimately, maybe allows many boys to reach their potential while the best, most promising girls cannot. Ware also thinks separation lead to increasing emphasis on sheer strength and bulk in male dominated sports like football. I remember being able to best the boys in elementary and middle school in everything but upper arm strength. Had I continued to workout with the boys, who knows? Not gonna play football with the boys but swimming, tennis, sailing�.
My public school PE experience, confirmed by friends on social media, was incredible. We girls all felt challenged and supported. I am still into fitness, in large part thanks to my schooling. I LOVE that I was trained in elementary school by an older, heavy, unathletic white guy who would get no sympathy today. He made angels sing on the gym floor. We ran around and around for him, excelled in the Presidential Physical Fitness challenges, played gym hockey after school, climbed ropes, square danced and did The Hustle. None of this makes sense, stereotypically. Also, I was blessed with two remarkable female coaches in Junior High who went on and beyond for us. I’m guessing one or both were in the closet. I still can’t assess the human touch vs government intervention on this one (most probably the latter let the former shine). But we surely must have benefitted from good policy.
Ware expresses decidedly mixed feelings for BJK. Like she was neither intellectual nor dogmatic and she, maybe, benefitted too much personally from her support of girls and women. Ware comes across as a first and third wave feminist while BJK is of the second. My temperament and life experience lands me firmly in the second wave, too. I respect the First Wave. The Third Wave seems to be inviting an infantilization of women. The third wave loudmouths seem to be undoing the progress the First made. I don’t place Ware in that subset at all.
An acquaintance from Argentina quipped to me in the 1990s that soccer (futball) never took off in the US because Title IX took resources away from boys. HAHAHA. Intuitively, without reading up on this, I know soccer eventually made its way across the US BECAUSE girls were discovering it along side their brothers. Soccer is a family sport here. Not to mention, immigrants (legal or otherwise) carted over their love of the game and helped make things happen here.
“I think the reason we [Billie and her pro baseball bro Randy] are here today is that our parents did not live through us; they stood behind us� I am doing the same but my kids are not sporty! What am I missing?
“From the start she had an outsider’s [class, gender, then sexuality] sense that made her want to shake up the game from its country-club tonyness and make it more of a people’s sport.�
As a child of a very structured household, BJK faced a world where “the rules all started to change, and it seemed there weren’t any rules left. {She} tried to go with the flow, but always seemed…at the front of the line.�
“As a popular sports superstar, BJK quickly moved beyond just tennis to become a symbol for something even bigger: women’s rights and women’s changing roles in society.�
BJK “grasped something that second-wave feminism often missed—that sports are politics and thus an integral part of the struggle for women’s liberation.� I think Ware means First Wave Feminism?
Getting involved in Title IX
For females and males to play sports on equal terms, it took “education, advocacy, political engagement, and even entrepreneurship. Just as she had done in the Battle of the Sexes, BJK dovetailed her personal and professional priorities with building support for women’s sports in the society at large..�
Beyond Title IX
Coed sports. “’Separate but equal� means women will always be second-class citizens in sports.� BJK
“Could this hyper emphasis on male size and strength be a reaction to the inroads of women in sports?� Mariah Burton Nelson, “The stronger women get, the more men love football.�
Ware offers suggestions on “how gender could be deemphasized in sports� on p. 175.
“More than 35 years of Title IX have shown what the female body is capable of—pretty much anything that the male’s is. Ironically, Title IX has also made it significantly harder to envision such a brave new [coed] athletic world precisely because sports revolution it sparked unfolded in a an athletic system so rigidly divided by gender. Reconciling these dual legacies—the unleashing of women’s athletic potential versus the inadvertent (or perhaps not so inadvertent) reinforcement of sex segregation in sports—will be a major challenge as the women’s sport revolution continues to evolve.�
April 17, 2011
About the last book I'd ever pick up on my own (I am about as far from interested in sports as one can possibly be), but Ware's successful integration of a widespan of provocative topics--feminism, Title IX, the politics of athletics, BJ King, public outing, &co--proved a quite interesting and educational (but not boring) read. I can't say I came away from the book *liking* King really at all, but I don't require that from a biographical portrait. She certainly offers a useful icon/figurehead for the intersections of these diverse issues, even if she seems self-serving and, well, profoundly fake.
It's an accessible book that wears its research well. In the interest of full disclosure, Susan Ware was teaching a grad course I was in at the time of reading, but this is no sycophantic review. I think particularly if you're interested in feminist history, sports, tennis, or King this will be a wonderfully useful book to have at hand.
It's an accessible book that wears its research well. In the interest of full disclosure, Susan Ware was teaching a grad course I was in at the time of reading, but this is no sycophantic review. I think particularly if you're interested in feminist history, sports, tennis, or King this will be a wonderfully useful book to have at hand.
September 20, 2017
Independent scholar Susan Ware presents a relevant history on why tennis star Billie Jean King was a symbol for the revolution in women's sports. The wave of feminism and Title IX also opened the doors for women to participate in sports. It seemed timely to read especially with the Battle of the Sexes movie coming out this month, the US open in September and the recent interviews with King. My favorite thing about King is her presence of mind to think about the bigger picture; as she has demonstrated it's lonely to lead but necessary. A great cheerleader for tennis and humanity. Susan Ware chronicles King's life here both the great and the scandal that put King front and center in 1981. Black and white photos, notes and index.
July 6, 2018
Loved this book! Well written, great storyline, and great argument. The story of the rise of women's athletics from the 1960s to today is riveting when told by Susan Ware and including the important Billie Jean King.
March 30, 2019
Book started out interesting and remained full of interesting information; however, it dragged significantly from chapter 2 until chapter 6 where it became quite repetitive. The pace picked up again in the last chapter, and the epilogue was a good wrapping up point.
March 24, 2023
I think this book did a really great job describing the influence and power of women's sports, Billie Jean King, pop culture, and Title IX in the 70s and after. For a monograph, I thought the writing was pretty good too, and wasn't all that boring. Ware kind of ate when she wrote this.
November 10, 2017
I especially enjoyed reading the chapter on Title IX. Lots of food for thought about women and sports.
August 23, 2021
Really enjoyed the history of Billie Jean King's career and her impact on women's sports. I have just purchased her own biography, All In and am looking forward to reading it as well.
April 23, 2018
Unusually for me, I was reading two non-fiction books concurrently, this one and The Taste of Empire. This one was equally good and equally interesting. Yes, it is about Billie Jean King but it is more than that. The author is looking at King's rise to the top of "women's" tennis, the ebb and flow of the feminist movement, and the impact of Title IX funding on sports, especially women's sports. There was lots I did not know, esp. regarding Title IX both how much it has changed sports and yet also how little. And the same can be said of feminism. Many things are better certainly but it is still a very separate and unequal world for women in sports and otherwise.
Here is the link for the full review posted at Madison Public Library's book blog:
Here is the link for the full review posted at Madison Public Library's book blog:
April 28, 2011
B This book is more abt how feminism shaped Billie Jean's life and how women's sports were shaped by Billie Jean. Still, really interesting, learned a lot abt the women's sports movement. Recommended for athletes, feminists, and me!
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August 14, 2018The book, Game, Set, Match: Billie Jean King and the Revolution in Women's Sports, is half about Billie Jean King's life and half about women gaining momentum in sports. It digs deeply into the history of Title IX and how it benefited female athletics. It also explores King's role in the growth of women's sport. Many consider her the most important person in the history of all sports because of all the work she did to help advance toward gender equality. A common theme portrayed through King's life is to create your own legacy. Billie Jean King did not just want to be a great amateur tennis player. So instead, she and other tennis players created their own tour. In addition to this, she took part in many organizations to help benefit women. All of this led to her having a forever lasting legacy. This legacy was cemented in 2006 when the USTA named the US Open tennis complex the Billie Jean King National Tennis Center. I would not recommend this book because although I loved the topic, it dove into to much detail at times, which confused me and made me bored. The message of this book is great however!
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