Marea Hartman

Dame Gladys Marea Hartman, DBE (22 June 1920 – 29 August 1994) was a British athletics sports administrator. She was one of the longest-serving and most influential sports administrators in 20th century British athletics.

Marea Hartman is credited with the post-World War II integration of British women athletes into full competition and parity with that of their male counterparts. Internationally well respected, she was for thirteen years the chairwoman of the Women's Commission of the International Amateur Athletic Federation. She was also the first woman to serve as president of the Amateur Athletic Association of England, from 1991 to 1994.

Hartman was born in Wandsworth in London. Her father was Swiss and had left Switzerland to work in London where he found a position as a caterer. Marea possessed natural ability as a runner and in the early 1930s as a member of Spartan Ladies Athletic Club she was representing her club and her county of Surrey. She left home at an early age lodging in Clapham in south London and working for the paper manufacturers Bowater as a human resources officer devoting her non-work time to women's athletics. Any chances that Hartman would become an International athlete were ended by the onset of war during which conflict she served in the Welfare Division based in London.

Marea Hartman was one of the few women that also included Dorothy Nelson Neal and Vera Searle who reached senior positions in the male dominated world of post-war British athletics.She started off in 1945 as Hon. Treasurer of Spartan Ladies and early in 1950, aged 29, she was elected Hon. Treasurer of the national governing body, the Women's AAA. She was appointed team manager of the British women's team for the Melbourne Olympic Games of 1956, holding this position until 1978, a period that encompassed five Olympic Games and a host of other important meetings including the European championships and the Commonwealth Games. In the 1950s female athletics had little or no media profile, and it is to Hartman's credit that she was able to secure sponsorship deals with a number of manufacturers of well-known brands, including Unilever products Bovril and Sunsilk.

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