Longtime island resident Barbara Drinkwater, PhD, was honored last month in Washington, D.C., by the President’s Council on Fitness, Sports & Nutrition.

Drinkwater was one of five recipients of the council’s 2014 Lifetime Achievement Award for her work, which, until her retirement in 2000, focused on the female athlete: women’s physical performance under environmental stressors such as heat and altitude, the effect of exercise‑associated amenorrhea on bone health and the role of exercise and calcium in preventing osteoporosis.

“I am very grateful to the group for having chosen me for one of the awards,” Drinkwater said recently. “This is going to be a big surprise on Vashon, where a lot of people think all I can do is rescue cats and dogs.”

Drinkwater, as many islanders know, founded Vashon Island Pet Protectors 30 years ago. Apart from Drinkwater’s love of animals, she pioneered research in the field of women’s athletics, working at Pacific Medical Center as a research physiologist, the University of California, Santa Barbara and the University of Washington.

When Drinkwater went to work in Santa Barbara, she said it was at a time when women were not supposed to run more than twice around the track.

Her research with female athletes debunked that idea. Additionally, she said, it was thought women could not tolerate heat stress, a misconception that prohibited them from working in several jobs, such as the steel industry, where women were not allowed to work on the floor.

“They were relegated to being secretaries, and the pay scale difference was tremendous,” she said.

She debunked the heat stress theory as well.

And, she said, many thought women could not withstand altitude and were not invited to climbs in the Himalayas. On a research trip there with a group of women, Drinkwater put that myth to rest as well.

“Obviously, they were very successful,” she said. “There were so many false reasons women could not do something.”

And, she noted, it was 1984 before the Olympic Games included a women’s marathon, and Joan Benoit of the United States won the gold medal.

Discrimination in sports still continues, she noted. Female ski jumpers failed to have their event included in the winter Olympics in Vancouver, British Columbia, in 2010, and, she said, she recently read about a country objecting to including sprint canoeing for women in the Olympics, citing the outdated notion that an activity performed primarily on one side would damage the athlete’s reproductive organs.

“It’s a never-ending battle,” Drinkwater said.

Drinkwater, nearing 90, has previously credited a lifetime of physical activity for her own good health.