In 1921, Frenchwoman Alice Milliat created the International Women’s Sport Federation (Fédération Sportive Féminine Internationale, FSFI) to try to reproduce internationally what she had achieved in France with the national Federation of French Women’s Sports Societies (FSFSF). The aim was to create a structure separated from the men’s federations, sovereign in controlling women’s sport. However, in addition to the general hostility of existing international sporting bodies, the FSFI faced highly heterogeneous national contexts: although France had the FSFSF, not all countries had developed sport separately for women. In France, the progressive training of women leaders in an autonomous women’s federation enabled women candidates to be put forward to head the international federation, but in other countries, men represented their national sportswomen. Women’s physical activities were viewed in differently, and not all of the federation’s national branches were equally integrated into the local feminist network. The FSFI can therefore be considered a transnational women’s movement (rather than a feminist group) and a place for international debates on women and sports.
Florys Castan-Vicente (Wed,) studied this question.