From Women's Exclusion to Gender Institution: A Brief History of the Sexual Categorisation Process within Sport

Abstract

It was not until the 1920s that the slow and long process of women's accession to the Olympics began: a progressive yet still uncompleted conquest. But the integration of women was not taken for granted. It was initially just a concession in reaction to the strategy of a separate female games. Besides, the progressive integration of women took place together with the institutional necessity of segregation between male and female events. Thus sport remains a place where gender division is institutionalised from a legal and an organisational point of view. The aim of the paper is to investigate the means employed by the sporting establishment to preserve this gender division in spite of the contradictions it has to face. This means covering the whole spectrum of the practice to control the body, symbolic as well as legal.