Sport and women

Exclusion, pioneers and conquests: Alice Milliat, the Women's World Games, the first female Olympians and the parity of Paris 2024.

The outline, topic by topic

Each topic is weighted the way the exam weighs it.

Alice Milliat: what is it?
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French sports administrator who founded the Federation of French Women's Sports Societies (1917) and organised the Women's World Games.
She chaired the federation from 1919, founded the International Women's Sports Federation in 1921 and pushed the IOC to open athletics to women.
The IOC refuses women's athletics. What does Alice Milliat do in 1922?
- She organises Women's World Games in Paris
- She founds a women's IOC in Lausanne
- She wins women's athletics a place at the 1924 Games
- She gets a law on women's sport passed
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She organises Women's World Games in Paris
Her pressure brought women's athletics into the 1928 Games.
Women's World Games: what is it?
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International women's competitions held from 1922 to 1934, starting in Paris in 1922.
They answered the IOC's refusal to open athletics to women.
Why was the medical argument used so much to exclude women from sport?
- Studies had proved that intense effort made women infertile
- Sportswomen themselves refused endurance events
- It presented as natural a fragility that came from social norms
- Federations lacked doctors to supervise women
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It presented as natural a fragility that came from social norms
People feared for motherhood and femininity: it was a social construction.