The Politics of Women's Sportswear: From Corsets to Compression Shorts

For most of recorded fashion history, what women have worn while moving has been decided by someone else. Whether cinched into whalebone, bound in elastic, or squeezed into compression fabric, the female body in motion has rarely escaped the gravitational pull of patriarchal aesthetics. Sportswear, often framed as functional and unglamorous, has actually been one of the most charged sites of feminist struggle.

From the corset to the sports bra, from the leotard to the high-waisted legging, athletic clothing has tracked the long, uneven arc of women's rights. To wear something that lets you run, lift, sweat, or compete on your own terms is a small political act — and one that remains contested in boardrooms, locker rooms, and legislatures around the world, including in Australia.

Corsets and the shaping of Victorian womanhood

The corset was never just underwear. By the mid-19th century, it had become a structural metaphor for how society wanted women to behave: compressed, contained, ornamental. Tight-lacing deformed ribs and shifted organs, all in service of an ideal silhouette that signalled class respectability and female fragility. Suffragists in places like London and Boston publicly burned or discarded corsets in the early 1900s as a rejection of the body politics they represented.

The early feminist argument was not that women's bodies were wrong, but that the apparatus shaping them was a tool of control. Reform-dress movements proposed loose-fitting bifurcated garments and Turkish trousers, often meeting ferocious moral panic about women "masquerading" as men. The Victorian era established the template that would repeat for the next 150 years: when women demand clothing that enables movement, authority responds with anxiety about propriety.

The sports bra revolution and bodily autonomy

When Lisa Lindahl, Polly Smith, and Hinda Miller sewed together two jockstraps in 1977, they had no idea they were inventing what would become a multi-billion-dollar category. The sports bra arrived in the same political moment as the Equal Rights Amendment battles in the United States and the rise of women-only running clubs in cities like Melbourne, where the late 1970s saw informal women's jogging groups pushing back against harassment on public paths.

The bra-burning mythology, actually a misinterpretation of a 1968 protest, became a useful shorthand for what the sports bra represented: women taking possession of their own chests for functional rather than decorative purposes. For the first time, a garment existed specifically because women's bodies required technical support during athletic exertion — a fact manufacturers had simply ignored for decades.

Athleisure, wellness, and the marketing of empowerment

By the 2010s, sportswear had merged seamlessly with everyday clothing. Yoga pants migrated from Bondi studios to brunch tables. Lululemon, Sweaty Betty, and a parade of influencers sold not just leggings but a worldview. The uniform of neoliberal feminism was cross-front leggings paired with a mantra about "boss babe" energy.

This was the era in which brands learned to sell empowerment as an aesthetic, and feminist analysis turned to what the marketing was actually obscuring. As girlboss feminism made plain, individual consumer choices were being sold as substitutes for collective structural change. A $120 pair of leggings was framed as a feminist act, while the women who sewed them in global factories continued to face wage theft and unsafe conditions.

The athleisure boom also exported a particularly white, middle-class, able-bodied vision of what athletic femininity looked like. Curves were celebrated in a way that still demanded they be smoothed, lifted, and contoured by fabric. Real women's bodies, sweating and struggling through an actual workout, were edited out in favour of a pristine, branded performance.

The gendered design gap in performance wear

For all the marketing spend, technical innovation in women's athletic apparel has lagged. Researchers at the University of Massachusetts Amherst have documented that sports equipment — from bicycles to ski helmets — is overwhelmingly designed using male reference points and then scaled down.

A few recurring issues women navigate in sportswear include:

• Inadequate breast support built into "performance" tops
• Footwear developed on male foot anatomy and merely recoloured
• Smaller hip-to-waist ratios ignored in bib shorts and ski pants
• Heat regulation in technical fabrics tested primarily on male physiology

This gap is not accidental. It reflects an industry assumption that women are an afterthought, a niche, or a colour scheme. So-called "shrink it and pink it" engineering has become a feminist issue because it directly affects safety, performance, and whether women can stay in their sports at all.

Compression, modesty, and the trans athlete debate

Compression shorts and similar garments have become unexpectedly central to contemporary culture wars. Debates over whether female athletes should wear skimpy uniforms, modest alternatives, or functional compression wear are tangled up with questions about trans inclusion, body policing, and who gets to define "appropriate" female athletic presentation.

The recurring flashpoints often focus on:

• Volleyball and beach handball mandates around bikini bottoms in international federations
• Athletics kit choices for trans and gender-diverse competitors at major events
• Claims of "biological advantage" used to justify different fabric standards
• The assumption that tighter performance wear is inherently immodest

The through-line is familiar: women's athletic bodies are still treated as spectacles first, athletes second. Whether the issue is a Norwegian beach handball team fined for wearing shorts or a trans sprinter competing in leggings, the clothing becomes the terrain on which broader anxieties about gender get played out.

Australia and the politics of sportswear on home soil

In Australia, the politics of women's athletic clothing have unfolded in a specifically local register. The AFLW launched in 2017, drawing immediate attention to how women footballers were expected to dress. Uniform redesigns followed pressure from players about ill-fitting shorts designed for male bodies — a recurring theme the league's own research eventually confirmed. Across WBBL cricket, A-League Women, and NRLW, Australian women athletes have publicly pushed back against kit designs that prioritised sponsorship space over bodily function.

Australian legislation matters here too. The Sex Discrimination Act 1984 prohibits discrimination on the grounds of sex, gender identity, and intersex status in sport, with limited exemptions. The Australian Human Rights Commission's guidelines on gender equality in sport have pushed national sporting organisations to update codes around uniform choice. Brisbane's growing list of women-only gym spaces, including Aboriginal-owned studios in Redfern and Fitzroy, are also quietly reshaping what community-based activewear looks like in practice.

The local market reflects this shift. Australian brands like The Upside, Running Bare, and labels from Melbourne's inner north have built businesses around functional designs and broader size ranges than the global fast-fashion duopoly typically offers. In Sydney's eastern suburbs and Brisbane's Fortitude Valley, sportswear is increasingly being designed by women who actually run, swim, and lift in it.

Sportswear will keep being political as long as women's bodies remain contested territory. Subscribe to the SCREAMING IN ALL CAPS newsletter, share this piece with a teammate, and keep pushing for kit that respects the athlete wearing it.