1.1 The Olympics and the traditional patriarchal mentality in sports

3Since its outset, modern sport has been conceived as the preserve of men, when not a stronghold of manhood.

4Facing patriarchal prejudices, women engaging in sports have been confronted, not only with the same sporting requirements as men but also by a series of additional gender-related barriers and obstacles including: claiming the right to compete; getting recognition and then support from sports officials at the local and national levels; gaining social acceptance to train full time and to compete abroad, that is to say, to lead, at least for some years, a life quite different from the traditional mother-spouse-housekeeper destiny. All these hurdles, that no man had ever had to face, had to be overcome, one by one. In Western Europe and North America, it took decades for the situation to evolve significantly. As an indirect consequence, the history of women in long-distance running appears, much more than men’s history, as a cumulative and collective progression of small steps, involving and connecting women of several generations, countries and continents. The history of women in sport takes the shape of a timeline, while for men raising the topic of their acceptance in sports appears utterly incongruous.

1.2 Women in distance running? “Not a very edifying spectacle”

5The running races of athletics have been at the core of this gender-related struggle since the earliest decades of the 20th century. For a long time, women were simply not allowed to compete in races longer than 100 m. When the situation evolved, it was only to give them the right to run over 200 m. In 1928, after harsh debates involving medical considerations and despite fierce opposition from senior International Olympic Committee (IOC) officials, an 800 m race was introduced to the Olympics. At that time, Soviet women were already racing almost double distance—1,500 m—and beating the 1913 world record held by a Finnish girl called Lempi Aaltonen. But the IOC officials had a distinctive sense of the position of women and they were shocked by the image of one contestant in this first Olympic 800 m race collapsing on the track at the finishing line. Collapsing after any competitive race is rather common in athletics, but it was then considered as “Not a Very Edifying Spectacle” by the sports press.

6As a consequence, the 800 m race was withdrawn from the Olympic programme in 1960 and from all other major competitions until another wave of feminine advances shook the old patriarchal prejudices of our societies.

Figure 27. Hitomi Kinue (left) and Lina Radke (right) run the 800 m at the 1928 Olympics in Amsterdam

7Women’s advances in society and running distances in athletics competitions are thus correlated, the former making progress possible in the latter, though in a rather indirect manner: new women’s rights helped to change the image of women in society, which in turn allowed some progression of what was acceptable in terms of public demonstration of physical activity, partial nudity and expressions of effort, pain, and joy, involving social conceptions of both femininity and maternity. Because they were entering a men’s sphere, women engaging in sports competitions were suspect—and potentially revolutionary—on both issues. As a consequence, 800 m races were not reopened to women before 1954, access to the 1,500 m race was only acquired in 1969, racing over 3,000 m came in 1974 and the marathon in 1982, all of these advances being achieved in Western Europe and/or North America.

2.1 The traditional low-status, low-expectation social role of women in Ethiopia

8Traditional Ethiopian society expects women to be child-rearing, cooking, cleaning, and washing. These tasks are exclusively the responsibility of women, often performed without running water. Women in rural areas also play a key role in subsistence agriculture including care of domestic animals (sheep, goats and cows). Another problem for women is teenage pregnancy, usually going together with early marriage. In such conditions, engaging in sport has long been a very challenging decision, requiring not only a very strong personality, but also decisive support from at least the closest circle of relatives. An additional, more subtle problem is that girls have also been discouraged, indirectly, because of low expectations, especially in terms of professional careers. And competition has clearly been perceived as a men’s preserve. In such a context, among the few girls who managed to engage in sport, even fewer went into competition. Finally, underrepresentation of women in sports can be attributed to the conflicting values of sexual beauty and sporting competence: beautiful women in Ethiopia are usually not expected to be thin, let alone skinny. So, women engaging in such an arduous path were commonly ostracised and needed to overcome a series of hurdles than no male athlete has ever faced.

9One of the very first Ethiopian woman athletes, Tsigie Gebre Mesih, gives a good personal account of this situation, in the following chapter.

2.2 Longer training for Ethiopian women to reach Olympic competition?

10In the men’s category, Abebe Bikila started training properly only four years before winning his first Olympic gold medal. He was soon followed by several other male runners, as his sporting feats served as a source of inspiration and launched the construction of the Ethiopian culture of athletics, showing that it does not necessarily take long to “make a champion,” nor to build a sports tradition at a national level. In the case of Ethiopian women athletes, the timespan between their first participation in an international competition (1967, Tsigie Gebre Mesih at the East African Championships in Kisumu, Kenya) and their first gold medal in the long-distance running event at a world-class competition (1992, Derartu Tulu in Barcelona Olympic Games) stretches over 25 years. Why did it take decades for women to achieve what men did in a few years?

11The main reason for this collective delay lies in the dual handicap, which characterises this population: they were women in a men’s sector of activity (competitive sport), and they were women living in a traditional culture and society. Because the obstacles arising from this dual handicap involve mentalities and prejudices, which do not change radically overnight, it took several generations of active, bold and resilient female runners to reach the point where they just needed to train and compete as international athletes, and no longer needed to confront and overcome social resistance before training and competing like international athletes. This progress was not achieved before the early 1990s and the whole history of Ethiopian women athletics before this date is a long story of individual attempts to break a series of heavy constraints and to burst forth sporadically in some international competition before being going back to the harsh reality of their condition of standard Ethiopian women.

3.1 The first forms of physical education for girls in Ethiopia

12The first Ethiopian girls to get involved in modern sporting activities were the pupils of Ǝtege* Menen (or Mänän) school, a school established in 1931 and reserved for the girls of the nobility and the local economic elites. Like in the first boys’ schools of the capital—the Mənəlik II School opened in 1908 and the Teferi Mekonnen School in 1925—most of the teachers were foreigners laying the foundations of a Western education in Ethiopia. In these schools, the young nobles of the capital, future leaders of the country, became familiar with forms of physical education which were modelled on the teaching in Europe. So they performed different types of physical activities. However, football games were restricted to boys, especially when the first matches opposed these young players and members of foreign communities in Addis Ababa: defending the honour of the host nation against the Armenians of the Ararat team, Greeks in Olympiacos, Italians in Juventus and Indians in the Indian Team was an utterly manly task.

3.2 Italian sportswomen during the occupation

13During the Italian occupation, sports activities played an important part in the fascist doctrine, as physical activities were intended to shape and strengthen the new empire. In this context, the political institutions of the Italian regime were in charge of promoting all kinds of sports and fostering the participation of both men and women.

14But discrimination reigned and no Ethiopian was allowed to take part in the sports activities of the occupiers: they had to compete in their own activities, organised by a “Sports Office for the Indigenous.” Still, for the first time ever, Ethiopian populations were able to witness new sporting activities such as athletics, basketball, fencing, rock-climbing, boxing, cycling, motorcycling and car racing. Some other activities, already known in Ethiopia, such as wrestling, shooting and horse riding, were practised and organised by the Italians in very different ways to the traditional ones, in very specific environments and with strange attire. More surprising even, women were taking part in some of these activities, especially in fencing, horse riding, basketball and athletics.

15Unfortunately, after the end of the Italian occupation, all modern sports, except football and boxing for men, disappeared from Ethiopia, with the notable exception of the School Sports Day, sponsored and attended by the Emperor. Seeing Italian women training and competing in diverse sport activities may have been inspirational for some Ethiopian women, but local society was still too traditional to value and foster feminine involvement in activities exposing their body publicly and distracting them from their conventional social roles.

3.3 Pioneers as social rule breakers

16Overcoming the social prejudices related to femininity, maternity and the traditional roles and status of women in Ethiopian society has not been an easy game. The pioneers, presented in the following chapter, had to face strong opposition from their entourage, just to gain the right to start training. All of them had a strong personality. But this feature does not suffice and all of them also benefitted from some form of support from either their relatives or the political context in which they started daring to join in sports activities. Tsegie came from a wealthy urban background, submitting less to tradition and more open to Western influences. She grew up in Asmära, a very Westernised city—at that time—compared to the standards of the region. In addition to that, she received support from her father, a sportsman and a member of the armed forces.

17Other pioneers had to face harsh prejudice, mainly because they were becoming competent enough to beat men and challenge their symbolic dominating position: as a reaction, their femininity was questioned through comments and nicknames like “tomboy” (Asselefesh Adera) or “the man in disguise” (Derartu Tulu). Asselefesh, who was the first Ethiopian women to run a marathon—in Neuchatel 1989—also admitted to receiving the support of her father, who allowed her to go and play football in the streets of mid 1980s Addis Ababa. As the Därg regime was promoting gender equality, some female football teams emerged around that time, like the famous Etu Mela Michi team. But soon some coaches deterred Asselefesh from playing football under the pretext that it could “damage her femininity,” and oriented her towards athletics.