Women and Sport in France in the Late Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries

Abstract

This paper provides an overview of women and sport in France in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries incorporating an outline of the historical changes in women’s participation in sport and physical culture and discussing the methodological approach to the study of female sport history. Referring to an introductory survey by a British historian, Richard Holt, women’s participation in sports in modern France can be summarized as follows: Cycling rapidly became popular among women around the turn of the century, despite the opposition of men who expected women to adhere to the social norms of traditional femininity and the controversy about proper dress and the effect of the bicycle on the female reproductive system. Gymnastics and athletics for women developed particularly during the 1910s linked to the concern of nationalists. Women formed independent female sports clubs and organizations, which led to the growth of women’s participation in various forms of sport between the wars. Tennis developed as a leisure activity for male and female of bourgeois class linked with sociability. French female tennis star, Suzanne Lenglen became the leading woman player who embodied the possibilities of competitive sport for women. She was featured in a popular Japanese girls’ magazine in 1929 as a female student role model who practiced sports from a moral point of view. As a way to approach the future study of female sport history, it is important to placemultifaceted focus on representations, medical/scientific discourse and nationalist ideology appearing in various primary sources in relation to women’s participation in the development of modern sport and to find certain similarities or common characteristics in the social and gender relations within sport in different areas and across national boundaries.