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The All-American Girls Professional Baseball League (AAGPBL) was the first, and to date, the only women’s professional baseball league in United States history. Yet many people are unaware of the league’s existence. The purposes of this paper are to (1) review the historical and research literature on the AAGPBL, (2) examine the reflections on gender issues within this literature, and (3) discuss how these issues contributed to the success and failure of the AAGPBL. The published historical documentation and archived artifacts of the AAGPBL are quite thorough; however, research on the league is limited. Gender issues, such as the female apologetic, marginalization, and feminist reconstruction of sport are evident throughout the league’s existence. These issues enhanced the league’s success, but also contributed to its demise. The pioneering efforts of the women of the AAGPBL created a new vision of opportunity for girls and women in sport that still resonates today.

The purpose of this article is to examine the roles that women play in the Diamond Dolls organization and the meaning and significance of those (gendered) roles in the university and athletic setting. Specifically, I am concerned with the ways in which institutions construct and maintain hegemonic femininity (Choi, 2000; Krane, 2001). Employing a feminist approach, I critically explored the use of sexist language in the naming of a student organization, the roles and responsibilities of the Diamond Dolls, and the meaning of these roles within the context of intercollegiate sport. Lastly, the role that gender norms play in women’s participation in such organizations is also addressed.

Women’s sports is at an all-time high, as evidenced by the emergence of a number of professional women’s sport leagues (such as basketball, baseball, and fast-pitch softball). Notwithstanding the growth and popularity of women’s sports, these leagues will have to compete with other forms of leisure for consumers’ discretionary time and resources. Since financial stability is vital to the longevity of the developing women’s leagues, the competition for consumers will require a greater need for the marketers of women’s professional sport organizations to understand the variety of factors that influence sport consumers’ behavior and shape the composition of their respective markets. Presented in this article are the results of a study in which the consumers of one of the professional women’s basketball teams that competed in the American Basketball League (ABL)were investigated. The teams’ spectators are profiled as sport consumers, factors that influenced their attendance, are identified and implications for effective marketing strategies are noted.

In this study we examined sport coverage and gender representation in photographic images in Sports Illustrated for Kids over a 3-year period. A content analysis of 4205 photographic images was conducted and data were analyzed using a chi-square analysis. Our research revealed that females were substantially underrepresented within the magazine (12%) and only appeared on the cover once over a 3-year period (<1%). The top three sports represented for men in SI for Kids were baseball, basketball, and football, whereas the top 3 “sports” for women were basketball, not in a sport (e.g., a fan), and soccer. Females were more likely than males to be represented in photographic images off the court, in individual sports, in feminine sports, in a posed position, as nonathletes, in tighter clothing, sleeveless shirts, with more of their legs showing, and with their midriff visible. When considering these findings in light of social learning theory, it is likely that media coverage within SI for Kids plays an important role in determining which sports are acceptable or unacceptable for boys and girls.