Women’s sports uniforms: A century-long debate on shorts v skirts

Cork players celebrate after winning last year's All-Ireland Senior Camogie Championship final against Galway. Photo / Getty images

THREE KEY FACTS:

• In 1921, Wellington women resolved a debate over rugby attire, choosing shorts despite modesty concerns.
• The Irish Camogie Association faces a backlash for refusing players’ choice of shorts over skorts.
• The ongoing debate highlights the need for functional sportswear designed for the preference of athletes, not spectators.

In July 1921, in a little committee room within the warren of Wellington’s town hall, a dispute was taking place. The topic at play? Whether shorts were the appropriate attire for the new rugby team that was being established.

Some present were concerned about bare knees. One suggested stockings for modesty. Ultimately, the chair ruled that they “must expect a little barrack at first”, but that they were going to play the game properly, shorts and all.

Within one meeting, these women managed to reconcile a debate that rages today across the Irish sport of camogie, the women’s version of hurling. A final to be played between Cork and Waterford was cancelled as the sport gathered the world’s attention for all the wrong reasons. Players due to appear in the final refused to wear skorts, which are basically shorts with a fabric panel across the front, making them look like a skirt.

The idea of women wearing shorts rather than the feminine-coded skorts was a bridge too far for the camogie congress. It denied the motion through formal channels and is now dealing with a PR disaster.

This is just the latest spat over sportswomen’s wardrobes. A sign of how little the conversation has shifted in the past 100 years.

One of the first hurdles for women in sport to overcome has always been the question of appropriate attire. Once women were permitted to compete, the original uniform designs favoured the sensitivity of men rather than functionality for women: full dresses, covering everything from ankle to neck to wrist.

Here in New Zealand, heavy wool dresses, tunics and ties were all deemed essential pieces of kit for netballers. The required display of femininity was centred on uniform redesigns, which is why netballers still wear dresses. Now Lycra and sweat-wicking, but still with men’s preferences in mind.

Netball's Mystics huddle during last season's ANZ Premiership Grand Final. Photo / Photosport

We swung from the need to preserve modesty for male audiences to the need to sell our sex appeal to them: the very ’90s consensus being that men couldn’t enjoy watching women unless they were objectifying them.

This led to the well-documented discrepancies between male and female uniforms across many sports. The cut of the uniforms and the cut of the cameras worked in tandem to exacerbate the issue. However, as women’s place in sport has come into stronger focus, so has their desire to lead this conversation.

There are many examples now of protests around uniforms that have helped to shift public views and rewrite rulebooks. Challenges regarding the fabric, colour and cut are now more generally understood. The novel notion of choice has slowly been introduced as the basis of solutions – perhaps uniforms could be designed for athletes’ preferences rather than spectators’ proclivities.

These are all steps forward, but the biggest redesign is yet to come. It’s one that finally sees women dropped as the modifier from sport, allowing people to see them as athletes first rather than their gender.

Only then will we see uniforms for what they are: functional pieces of clothing, to allow the individual to fully express their athleticism, in their country or team’s colours. Until then, we will be stuck in this cycle of protest, outrage and concession to thread the needle of progress.

More than 100 years ago, this group in Wellington landed on a solution which the Camogie Association in Ireland still seeks in special meetings. They talked through their concerns and landed on shorts as their answer. Not just shorts, but black ones, something my own Wellington Rugby uniform wouldn’t adjust to until nearly a century later.

They managed what many in sports have failed to do, simply because they knew they would be the ones to wear it. They wanted to play properly, so they found the kit that fit.

Alice Soper is a sports columnist for the Herald on Sunday. A former provincial rugby player and current club coach, she has a particular interest in telling stories of the emerging world of women’s sports.