Women's Sports and Life Insurance

These are not necessarily related! It just happens that this week I have fielded both concerns about women in sports and questions about life insurance. 

First, just as women have always worked, women have always taken part in games of one kind or another. In the Middle Ages of Britain, I have discovered, women of all classes played ball games--throwing the ball, batting the ball, kicking the ball. I was amused to read that in Scotland sides of single women would take on married woman at football (soccer). I am in no doubt that women would have running races against each other at village fairs; they were certainly doing so in Britain by the 18th century. Wealthier women rode horses, participated in archery, hunted with dogs and/or falcons. They played tennis and an early form of golf. 

Of course, what activities women were permitted to do by their parents or brothers or husbands were very constrained by custom and whichever ideas about women's roles, deportment and health were current. The first woman to participate in a public horserace in England appears to have been Alicia Thornton in 1804. She had challenged her brother-in-law, and her husband placed a bet on her. Sadly, Thornton lost the 4 mile race but--dear heavens--she was riding side-saddle. The modern-day Olympics first allowed women to compete in 1900, but then they were permitted in only a handful of sports: croquet, equestrianism, golf, sailing, and tennis. The first woman to win in the Olympics was sailor Countess Helene de Pourtales (pictured above). 

Incidentally, some women boxed alongside their husbands in mixed-sex competitions in England in the 1720s. That's not really to my taste, I have to admit. I'd rather go lolloping after a rolling cheese or play football against the maidens of the parish.*    

Local women lolloping

Regarding life insurance, I still don't have it and Benedict Ambrose still doesn't have it, but we have no dependents and our mortgage is small. We are both employed, and one could still pay the bills if the other shuffled off this mortal coil.

Our situation is different from that of the happy young couple looking forward to raising a family of children, let alone that of the masterful man who has intentionally married a featherbrained beauty whose total lack of marketable skills renders her completely dependent on him. In both these cases, I think the main breadwinner (who is almost always going to be the man here) should take out term life insurance renewable every 5 years or so. (I am no expert, so here is what looks like sound advice for the UK.) 

Naturally, the breadwinners should be socking money away towards their eventual liberation from wage slavery. Depending on the style to which their families have become accustomed, they can stop paying insurance (and working) after they have amassed enough of a fortune to support their dependents' annual expenses. (Check local laws--especially tax regulations--about who gets the lolly when the breadwinner dies.) If a breadwinner's bread baker is itching to get back into the workforce after all dependent children have grown up, then the breadwinner can stop paying insurance premiums. If, however, the last child isn't out the door until the bread baker is 50 or more (or  unemployable), then I think the breadwinner should keep on buying life insurance--if, of course, he hasn't got a fine fortune to alleviate his bread baker's savage old age. 

I am conscious that I talk about the breadwinners' salaries as if they belonged to them/us. They don't, of course. The salaries belong to them, their spouses, and their dependent children. All my worldly goods I thee endow. When I get a raise, Benedict Ambrose gets that raise. 

When B.A.'s payday came around during my years of underemployment, he always said, "We got paid today." I appreciated that very much, for it saved my dignity in this money-conscious world. It was also in the good old Scottish (and Scottish-Canadian) working-class tradition of handing one's wife an unbroken pay packet. (The good Scottish [and Scottish-Canadian] working-class wife extracted some bills for her husband's personal use, and then bought the groceries, paid the bills, and banked whatever was left.)

Anyway, that's my thought for today. If, God forbid, B.A.'s adventures with cancer become so absorbing he can no longer work, then I we will take out term insurance on my hardworking yet mortal self. But right now, I think we're okay as we are.

*Actually, I think we could get a pretty good Matrons vs. Maidens game of 5-a-side going. How amusing--and traditional--that would be! I'm picturing it in the green sward behind the church, and the (English) parish priest looking on astonished.