Rodeo 5: Women in Rodeo
During the first quarter of the twentieth century, women frequently competed in bronco riding and steer roping events. Sometimes, they even competed directly with the men for prize money.
In 1929, Bonnie McCarroll was killed after being thrown by the bronco she was riding at the Pendleton Roundup. That brought an outcry against women taking part in such dangerous activities. The newly-formed Rodeo Association of America (RAA) didn't formally take a stand on the question. However, the RAA didn't include any women's events among the national championships it inaugurated in 1929.
The RAA was an organization of small to medium-sized rodeos, mostly in the West. As a result, female rodeo competitors virtually disappeared from the West. In the East, though, rodeo producers were generally larger and independent of the RAA. They continued to feature women competitors. William T. Johnson, the biggest organizer of Eastern rodeos, displayed women prominently in publicity and advertising for his shows and he offered sizeable purses for the women's events.
Johnson also had scouts out looking for talented cowgirls. Almost all of the young women competitors started in one of the many small Western rodeos that didn't belong to the RAA. Some of those rodeos experimented with women's events other than bronc riding, trick riding, and trick roping. Calf roping was the most popular.
Some larger rodeos in the West added the event, but a plan to stage calf roping at the Madison Square Garden Rodeo fell through. Unfortunately, that failiure may have prevented calf roping from becoming a standard women's rodeo event.
So-called sponsor events also became popular at rodeos in the West. These were quasi-athletic events, at best, in which ocal businesses sponsored cowgirls in a competition based more on appearance and dress than skill, though some sort of riding or roping contest was also included. The most common contest was a race in which riders had to maneuver through a figure-eight course marked by barrels, the origin of modern barrel racing.
Sponsor contests gradually became the chief form of competition for women in the West. As a result, the source of cowgirl talent for the major Eastern rodeos dried up during the 1930s and the number of top women competitors began to dwindle.
In 1936, male cowboys staged a strike at Joihnson's Boston Garden rodeo. Johnson eventually gave in to their demands but promptly got out of the business. That was another blow to cowgirls, since his successors weren't anywhere near as receptive to women competitors as Johnson had been.
Women were at first non-voting members of the Cowboys Turtle Association (CTA), which had been organized as an aftermath of the 1936 strike. However, in 1938 the CTA decreed that it would not work on the behalf of cowgirls, as it did for rodeo cowboys, in establishing minimum purses.
In 1939, the Madison Square Garden Rodeo offered performances by a group of sponsor girls from Texas. Two years later, that rodeo dropped the women's bronc riding competition because of the lack of competitors. Other major Eastern rodeos soon followed suit.
In 1942, movie cowboy Gene Autry formed the Flying A Rodeo Company and took over the operation of a number of larger rodeos, including most of those on the East Coast. In Autry's rodeos, women were little more than window dressing. They rode around on horseback, looking pretty, but didn't compete in any events.
However, 1942 also brought the first "all-girl rodeo," produced by Fay Kirkwood in Bonham, Texas. That rodeo was much more exhibition than competitiion. Kirkwood produced two more rodeos that year. The last of them, staged primarily for servicemen in Wichita Falls, Texas, offered competition in bronco riding, bull riding, and roping. The Flying V All-Cowgirl Rodeo was also held during the summer of 1942, in Paris, Texas, as entertainment for troops. Women competed in all of the traditional male events, including bulldogging and bull riding.
Because of World War II, there was a shortage of male rodeo competitors. As a result, a number of rodeos again began offering competition for women to fill out their programs. However, that ended almost as soon as the war did. In 1947, the sponsor contests returned and only a few rodeos had competitive calf roping for women.
In September of 1947, Nancy Binford and Thena Mae Farr produced the Tri-State All-Girl Rodeo in Amarillo, Texas. The rodeo included a sponsor contest, but with a difference: The usual cowgirl costume contest was eliminated and the horseback ride around barrels was timed rather than being scored by male juidges. Women also competed in bareback riding, calf roping, cutting, team tying, saddle bronc riding and steer riding, and there was an exhibition of bulldogging.
The success of that rodeo led to the founding, on February 28, 1948, of the Girls Rodeo Association (GRA) with Binford as president. The GRA standardized the timed barrel race for the sponsor competition and got rid of the costume contest. About 60 rodeos agreed to hold barrel races under GRA rules that year. Barrel racing became the only women's event at rodeos sanctioned by the Cowboys Turtle Association, which became the Professional Rodeo Cowboys Association (PRCA) in 1975. The barrel race was finally added to the PRCA's National Finals Rodeo in 1998.
The GRA was renamed the Women's Professional Rodeo Association (WPRA) in 1981. It now has more than 2,000 members and sanctions about 800 barrel races annually at PRCA rodeos. Its sister organization, confusingly named the Professional Women's Rodeo Association (PWRA), conducts a circuit of all-women rodeos and also has its own All Women's Rodeo National Finals, where women compete in bareback and bull riding, breakaway and tiedown calf roping, and team roping.