No abstract

Référence électronique Natalia Bazoge, « La gymnastique d'entretien au XX e siècle : d'une valorisation de la masculinité hégémonique à l'expression d'un féminisme en action »,

Our research analyzes French public policies concerning girls' access to sport through educational measures. It is based on the study of official texts and institutional reports published since 1945. They are seen as being indicators of the policy frameworks defined by the French State and guiding educators' action. Insofar as school has a socialisation role and contributes to the construction of stereotypes from a very young age, it appears essential to understand the practice possibilities offered there. It is thus a question of identifying the possibilities offered to girls and the representations associated with them, as well as the political, ideological and social foundations determining the directions taken. The historical approach was chosen to apprehend the processes that structured policy action and identify the changes over the long term. Justifying a policy of segregation, the naturalisation of the physical and moral qualities attributed to girls was followed by a universalist perspective adopted, from the 1980s onwards, as the condition for democratised access to the practice of sport. Failure to consider the social gender-related division of sports practices, constituting an obstacle to the construction of equality, gave way to reflection on the diffusion of stereotypes. This reflection achieved consensus in relation to policy ambitions at the beginning of the 2000s without, however, managing to detach itself from a naturalisation of the tastes and aptitudes of each sex.

This article examines the cultural and public health challenges associated with the dissemination of the Swedish approach and methods of physical education throughout France and illustrates the two main methods of influence, both direct through research and study visits and indirect through the creation of an international network entitled the International Federation of Physical Education. More particularly, it studies the roles of Philippe Tissié in 1898 and Pierre Seurin in 1946, and shows how these two major players of French physical education contributed actively to strengthening Swedish influence throughout France. It also highlights their equally essential role in the successful implementation of a pro-Swedish network in France, intended to serve their public health aims. This analysis forms part of the geopolitical and socio-cultural history of foreign physical education models, whose exemplarity was mainly dependent on Franco-Swedish relations and the models' social representations. Using archives from the French Physical Education League, travel logs and the Revue des jeux scolaires et d'hygiène sociale (Journal for School Games and Social Hygiene), it has been shown why the myth of the Swedish Eldorado contributed to creating, in France, "a work of art and of science that was, at the same time, both national and practical."