Mulheres, “sexo fraco … Pois sim!”: práticas esportivas em Montes Claros/MG (1979 a 1986)

Abstract

The sportive and corporal practices for women were controlled and defined by State policies, and also by rules of social conduct, based on the medical-hygienist discourse, for which the physical-sportive activities worked as pedagogical devices for the female bodies respecting "the natural limits and characteristics” of each sex. The aim of this study was to analyze sportive and corporal practices of women in the city of Montes Claros, located in the northern region of the state of Minas Gerais, in the period between the end of the 1970s and the beginning of the 1980s. We used, to compose the documental corpus: news from one of the city's printed newspapers, Jornal de Montes Claros, and narratives from five women (Physical Education teachers and athletes) who worked in sports in this city. The Discourse Analysis was the method chosen for the study, from an analysis device built based on the ideas of Michael Foucault, Eni Orlandi and Michel Pêcheux, to understand the discourses that emerge from the sportive and corporal practices of Montes Claros women. Gender was used to analyze the relations and manifestation of power, within a feminist and post-structuralist perspective. It was possible to infer that women from Montes Claros have been present in the city’s sports scene, at all levels of sports organization (administration/organization of events and sports spaces; as coaches, trainers and athletes). Montes Claros society did not present rigidity regarding the bourgeois morality rules, an aspect that allowed the presence of women in several public places, including in sports. Women developed their sports and body practices through transgressive processes, due to the medical and androcentric discourses that permeated the power relations that emerged in the sports field, based on biological determinism, patriarchy and sexism.