From Alice Milliat to Marie-Therese Eyquem: Revisiting Women's Sport in France (1920s-1960s)

Alice Milliat (1884-1957) and Marie-Therese Eyquem (1913-1978) were two female sport leaders whose institutional actions had important consequences for women's sporting participation. This contribution examines the extraordinary careers of both of these women in the context of the broader history of women's sport in France. Milliat's and Eyquem's lives and the institutional battles they fought on behalf of women were similar in a number of respects although they took place in different time periods: during the 1920s for Milliat and in the 1940s and 1950s for Eyquem. In pursuing their goals through opportunistic means, both challenged the gender order during periods of war and their aftermath: Milliat in the First World War period, and Eyquem in the Second. In spite of their similarities and differences, the two sport leaders were nevertheless representative of two distinct forms of feminism: one more strictly militant, the second more political.