31 May 2018

Göran R Buckhorn writes:

On 28 May, Lisa Taylor, who is a Collaborative Doctoral Partnership (CDP) Ph.D. student working on competitive women’s rowing since 1945 and known to the readers of HTBS, published an interesting article about the Women’s Amateur Rowing Association (WARA) on the brilliant website Playing Pasts. The WARA is frequently connected to Amy Gentry. What is little known is that Gentry was the assistant to a Mrs K. L. Summerton, who was the founder of WARA. With kind permission from Lisa and Margaret Roberts, editor-in-chief of Playing Pasts, HTBS is here linking to the article. Lisa writes:

The Women’s Amateur Rowing Association (WARA) has attracted little academic attention, yet as the first governing body to legislate for women’s rowing, its formation, ideology and development merit further examination. The WARA was formed in 1923 with the following goals in mind:

• To maintain amongst women the standard of Oarsmanship as recognised by Amateur Rowing Clubs;
• To hold a Regatta or Regattas if and when so determined by the Committee, such Regattas to be mainly or exclusively for women;
• To promote the interests of Boat Racing generally amongst women.

Continue to read Lisa’s article here.