SOCIAL REPRESENTATION OF BRAZILIAN WOMEN IN PHYSICAL-SPORTS ACTIVITIES: FROM SEGREGATION TO DEMOCRATIZATION

Abstract

The aim of this study is to describe the meaning of social representations associated with Brazilian women in physical-sport activity from 1870, when women tended to be excluded from these activities, to 1 950, when there was a widespread process of democratization of women's access to sports, which culminated in the first Womens Olympic Games, in Rio de Janeiro. With the support of multiple methodological approaches, the study considers: (a) the testimony of Brazilian intellectuals-medical doctors, jurists and educators - involved with the issue of women in sports in the last quarter of the nineteenth century and the first quarter of the twentieth century (Nísia Floresta, João da Matta Machado, Rui Barbosa, Fernando de Azevedo, Orlando Rangel Sobrinho and Afrânio Peixoto); (b) semi-structured interviews with elite informants considered icons of the movement of women's emancipation in/through sports: Maria Lenk, Yara Vaz, Aída dos Santos and Roselee Viana Ribeiro, and (c) media documents, mainly those concerned with the Spring Games, the first Women's Olympic Games, organized by the Jornal dos Sports from 1949 to 1972.