From Accra to Tokyo: African Sportswomen's Excellence and Respectability in Twentieth‐Century Global Sports

This article analyses the racialized and gendered constraints faced by African sportswomen in international sporting competitions, from the interwar period to the 1980s, with a focus on the policing and expectations framing young international athletes’ acceptable behaviour. After an overview of African sportswomen's participation in the Olympic Games and the Empire/Commonwealth Games using quantitative data from the Commonwealth Games and the Olympedia databases, the article concentrates on Ghana. This focus on one of the pioneering African countries to field women in international sports allows for an understanding of how African sportswomen's careers got framed by debates over excellency and respectability – with specific debates over chaperones – that reached the media and parliament.