Emancipation through sport? Feminism and medical control of the body in interwar France

From 1910 to the 1920s the range of sports open to women expanded, and the development of women’s sport in France intensified, despite the alarming proscriptions of the medical community. Two different visions of how women should move their bodies were put forward: either teaching educational gymnastics or training sports champions. We will focus on the strategies developed by the independent French Women’s Sports Federation to promote women’s sport, and answer or bypass the medical advice. We aim to highlight members’ personal initiatives, the support of the federation and prevailing opinion about the development of women’s sport, in particular how the federation used medical legitimation and selected sports deemed compatible with women’s body movement (‘adapted’ sports). We relate these tactics to different feminist discourses and strategies of the period, mostly moderate and differentialist, and also sometimes more radical and egalitarian.