Athletic contests help define what we mean in America by "success." By keeping women from "playing with the boys" on the false assumption that they are inherently inferior, society relegates them to second-class citizens. In this forcefully argued book, Eileen McDonagh and Laura Pappano showin vivid detail how women have been unfairly excluded from participating in sports on an equal footing with men. Using dozens of powerful examples - girls and women breaking through in football, ice hockey, wrestling, and baseball, to name just a few - the authors show that sex differences are notsufficient to warrant exclusion in most sports, that success entails more than brute strength, and that sex segregation in sports does not simply reflect sex differences, but actively constructs and reinforces stereotypes about sex differences. For instance, women's bodies give them a physiologicaladvantage in endurance sports, yet many Olympic events have shorter races for women than men, thereby camouflaging rather than revealing women's strengths. | Playing With the Boys by Eileen McDonagh, Paperback | Indigo Chapters