'They Always Remain Girls' : la re/production des rapports de genre dans les sports feminins au Quebec, 1919-1961

The author analyses women's sports in Quebec from 1919 to 1961, from the golden age of women's sport in Canada to the adoption of the Fitness and Amateur Sport Act by the federal government. She describes how gender relations have been re/produced in women's sport by studying discourses and practices, while also considering the influence of class, ethnicity, and religion on women's sport. The author studies first the way doctors, physical education teachers, and the Catholic Church conceived women's participation in sport. The ideas of two active participants in women's sport organization in Montreal, namely Olympic gold medalist and Montreal Star sports reporter Myrtle Cook (1902-1985) and Assistant Director of physical education for the Commission des écoles catholiques de Montréal and founder of the Institut d'éducation physique Cécile Grenier (1907-2003), are then analyzed in order to see how they contested dominant discourses. Finally, women's sports played at the mixed-gender Francophone Catholic Palestre nationale and the single-sex Anglo-Protestant Young Women's Christian Association, two sport centers of Montreal, are detailed in order to show the differences, but also some similarities, in sport organization in the Francophone and Anglophone communities.

PhD dissertation

Université de Montréal

Montréal

2011

xv-378p.

fr