Mens Sana in Corpore Sano: Debating Female Sport in Argentina: 1900–46

Abstract

This paper examines the intellectual debates generated by the growth of female sporting practices that occurred in Argentina between 1900 and 1946. In encouraging sporting activities as a key to perfecting the body and improving the mind, different medical, sporting, and physical education experts articulated a strongly gendered discourse. Controlled and rational sports were promoted as eugenic practices that enhanced women's childbearing capacity and improved their mothering abilities. By examining the opinions of experts about the impact of sport on the different stages in the female life cycle, this paper evaluates acceptable and objectionable physical practices and shows how these were related to social constructions of gender. As sporting practices became increasingly popular in the 1930s and 1940s, the difficulties in controlling them became more apparent, leading to concerns about their relationship to the declining birth rate, the apparent moral decline of the population, and the changes in social customs. As experts debated the implications of these changes, a new understanding of womanhood began to emerge.