'Maculinisation', 'sportification' and 'academicisation' in the men's colleges: a case study of the Carnegie curriculum

The dominant narrative flowing through much of the historical writing on physical education is that the men and women existed, as the 19th century ideology had it, in ‘separate spheres’ (Rosenburg 1982). In England, as Fletcher (1984) argued, women led the field from the late 19th century until the middle of the 20th century. When the men began to arrive on the scene in large numbers in the post WW2 period, in earnest from the late 1940s on, there began a ‘gender-war’ in physical education which the women, so the narrative tells us, eventually lost. But in fact professional training for men in physical education began much earlier than the 1950s and the input of men into the physical education profession starts even earlier than this date. Dunfermline College accepted male students from the 1910s, the Scottish School of Physical Education based in Glasgow opened its doors in 1932, while Carnegie Physical Training College in Leeds had its first intake of students in 1934, with Loughborough College close behind in 1936. Like those for the women, the colleges for men were initially strictly single-sex, seemingly confirming the separate spheres aspect of the narrative.