En kamp om kvindelighed: Bourdieus feltbegreb som værktøj

Resumé

Anne Lykke Poulsen: The struggle for femininity: Bourdieu’s concept of field as an analytical instrument In the late 19th century, the modern Danish sports movement developed and was organised around an ideological tension between gymnastics and competitive sports. Women participated in this movement, although to a lesser extent than men. Gymnastics was considered an acceptable physical activity for women, and female gymnastics teachers began to argue that women’s gymnastics was a specific female professional domain. Empirical evidence shows that women’s gymnastics was a contested domain in which discussions and struggles about content and leadership took place. In this article, Pierre Bourdieu’s concept of field is employed as an analytic instrument to elucidate, understand and explain the importance of female gymnastics teachers in the developmentmaof woman’s gymnastics in the years 1900-1940. It can be argued that women’s gymnastics in this period can be constructed as a specific subfield belonging to the field of sport while at the same time overlapping a number of social fields in society. The overlapping fields are educational and scientific fields and a so-called “shadow field“ of citizenship.