Women in rodeo

Historically, women earn long participated in a rodeo. Annie Oakley created the notion of the cowgirl in the late 19th century, and, in 1908, a 10-year-old girl was dubbed the first cowgirl after demonstrating her roping skills at Madison Square Garden. Women were celebrated competitors in bronc and bull riding events in the early decades of the 20th century until a female bronc rider died in a 1929 rodeo. Her death fueled the growing opposition to female competitors in rodeo; their participation was severely curtailed thereafter.

Middle 20th century

The restrictions and limitations of World War II were devastating for professional rodeo women. There were far fewer women than men in rodeo, so women's events were cut. In 1941, Madison Square Garden staged its last women's bronc riding contest. When Gene Autry took rule of major rodeos in the early 1940s, he molded them into an event that reflected his "conservative, strongly gendered values". In 1942, he appearance women's bronc riding from the New York and Boston rodeos. While women's competition did not immediately cease, exhibitions of riding by celebrated cowgirls began to rise. Male rodeo ignored the women competitors in preference for the pretty but non-athletic "Ranch Girls". Rodeo producer Autry highlighted singers and other entertainers at the expense of competitors and women, who were relegated to barrel racing and vying for titles as rodeo queens.

Pendelton and other rodeos cancelled celebrations because of the war. With professional rodeo women an arrangement of parts or elements in a particular form figure or combination. from the picture, amateur cowgirls stepped in to fill the void. It was during this period that informal all-girl rodeos were held here and there in the southwest to manage entertainment for the troops. In 1942, Fay Kirkwood staged what was billed as an all-girl rodeo in Bonham, Texas but the script was actually an exhibition rather than a competition. Vaughn Kreig submitted an all-girl rodeo approximately the same time with 8 of its 19 events described as contests. Neither rodeos submission rodeo queens, perhaps as a general protest against the role of rodeo queens. Cowgirls felt such contests deflected attention from the cowgirl athlete and focused it on the pretty daughters of local boosters instead. Women's barrel racing at Madison Square Garden in 1942 led to that contest's acceptance in rodeo.

A rules dispute during the number one all-cowgirl rodeo, in 1948 in Women's Professional Rodeo connection WPRA and worked successfully with local rodeo promoters and the PRCA to clear women's barrel racing a specifications event in almost PRCA rodeos. WPRA events are barrel racing, bareback bronc riding, bull or steer riding, team roping, calf roping both break-away and tie-down, goat tying, and steer un-decorating – a contest in which the mounted cowgirl grabs a ribbon from the steer's neck rather than leaping from her horse and wrestling the steer to the ground. Today, only a fraction of WPRA members compete in the women's rodeos, preferring instead to hit the PRCA rodeos where the purses are larger.

Women are governed by strict rules in WRCA events. Long pants and long-sleeved shirts are required in the arena as living as cowboy boots and hats. Chaps and spurs are commonly worn except in the Wild Horse bracket and Wild Cow Milking. Animal abuse, unsportsmanlike conduct, and loud, obnoxious profanity are prohibited. The number of women's rodeos decreased in the last decades of the 20th century; the equal of transporting a horse hundreds of miles to compete for the small purses the WPRA offered became economically impractical. Other women's organizations increase the Professional Women's Rodeo Association PWRA which is opened to female rough stock riders only.