If comparative studies of performance between men and women are very cautious with regard to running events, it is because prejudice has long delayed the appearance of female athletes, depriving researchers of their data in competition. When the American Kathrine Switzer tries for the first time in history to run a marathon in a non-clandestine way, by hanging a bib on her outfit in Boston, in 1967. She will face the wrath of the organizers, who will downgrade her.
No room for women
Women will have to wait until 1972 to legally participate in a marathon in the United States and 1984 to start the first Olympic marathon. The greatest of competitions has long been in line with the Frenchman Pierre de Coubertin, founding father of the modern Olympic Games at the end of the 19th century.e century, which considered that a female presence would be “uninteresting, unattractive and (…) wrong. »
“It was thought, until the 1960s, that sport in general, and endurance in particular, damaged the body of women, that it masculinized it and therefore that it endangered their fertility”, notes sports doctor Marion Delespierre-Mauppin. The trail runner explains in her thesis devoted to the perception of athletic women and the medical repercussions of ultra sport that “the first periods, menstruation, pregnancy, lactation and menopause were seen as phases requiring a high dose of vital energy, thus leaving little surplus for physical activity”.
Effects on cycles but not on fertility
“The first studies showed that with the strengthening of muscle mass observed in these athletes, there was an increase in testosterone. That was enough to talk about hyperandrogenism and its fertility corollaries, says Carole Maître, gynecologist at the National Institute of Sport, Expertise and Performance (Insep). Ultra-endurance causes many cycle disorders since the reduction in the energy reserve leads to a resting of the reproductive system. But we know the mechanism is much better today and the athletes are monitored so that there is no deleterious effect on their fertility. »
In France, the first national congress on women and sport was organized in 1974, before the medical profession recognized the benefits of physical activity for women in the 1980s. Doctors then began to break with the idea that a sportswoman could not find the level which was hers before her pregnancy. “The prolonged absence of a cycle leads to a hormone deficiency, which makes the runner less efficient, because the energy is less well supplied to the muscle, and the pain is perceived more quickly, emphasizes Carole Maître. But we have evolved in the conception of motherhood. Performance can be regained after pregnancy, and even be better in some cases. »
———————————————————-
A slow feminization of sport in France
In 2020, women represented 39% of members of a sports federation, against 30% in 2000, according to the National Institute of Youth and Popular Education (Injep).
As for men, running was, along with walking, the sport most practiced by women (38% in 2018).
It is estimated that one in two runners in France is a woman, although the figures for practices outside the federation are more difficult to establish.