Sara Gross' article on Alice Milliat starts with the statement:
"one visionary Frenchwoman could have saved us from a 100 years of inequality".
It is difficult to summarise the contribution of A. Milliat to women's sports more accurately. If women are today accepted in the Olympics it's in great part thanks to the efforts of A. Milliat. But let us start at the beginning.
It is not clear what kindled the interest of women in athletics and sports in general at the dawn of the 20th century. It probably had to do with the fact that women started having more opportunities to become educated. The fact that more and more women were working contributed to their seeking to assert their independence. The feminist ideas, which in the 1900's had already taken root in the western society, and the militant suffragette movement had influenced many women to try and do whatever men were doing, including venturing into the sports arena.
As early as 1899, women sports activities were developed inside male athletics clubs, despite the fact that most managers were opposed to women’s sport. The first official women's gymnastics club was Églantine de Lyon founded by C.F. Ludin in 1910. In 1912 was founded the Parisian club Femina Sport which proposed to its members activities in athletics and gymnastics. (The club exists to this date). Since the women activities were not recognised by the official gymnastics federation, Mme Ludin proposed, in 1912, the creation of the “Union Française de Gymnastique Féminine”. However, as is often the case (and this is a universally human characteristic, affecting both males and females), dissenting opinions did exist. Thus the Parisian clubs Femina Sport and Academia (the name of the later is in tribute to Plato who proclaimed the same obligations for women as for men in protecting the city) founded, in 1917, a dissident federation: Fédération des Sociétés Féminines Sportives de France. The president of Femina Sport, Alice Milliat was appointed treasurer of the new-founded federation. She was on her way to becoming a highly controversial and dominant figure in international sport for women.
The same year, 1917, saw the first french women's championship in athletics, organised by Femina Sport. By 1919 A. Milliat had become the president of the Federation. One of her first tasks was to petition the International Olympic Committee for the incorporation of women's athletics events in the Olympic Games of 1920. In vain! The IOC as well as the International Amateur Athletic Federation (that's what World Athletics was called at that time) did not care about women's sports. In fact, as I have explained in a previous post, de Coubertin was in favour of IOC eliminating all women's sports.
Thus MIlliat decided to explore the possibility of an international women's sports organisation. It started with a women’s international athletics meeting, held in March 1921 in Monte Carlo, in the Casino Garden, under the name of Women's Olympiad. It met with a great success and this spurred Milliat to proceed to the creation of the "Fédération Sportive Féminine Internationale". Only a woman of Milliat’s determination and ability could have accomplished such a feat. Once the FSFI was founded, Milliat reiterated her plea to the IOC concerning the inclusion of women's athletics events in the Paris, 1924, Olympic Games. To no avail! Milliat recounted: “I came up against a solid wall of refusal, which led directly to the creation of the Women’s Olympic Games”. So, in 1922 the second Women's Olympiad were organised, again in Monaco (a third instalment of the competition was to be held in 1923 in Monaco and a fourth one in London). Given the success of this competition, and the fact that the FSFI counted with 38 countries from 5 continents, Milliat decide to organise Olympic Games for women.
The first Women's Olympics were held in Paris in august 1922. Eleven events were in the program, including a race of 1000 m. (If you wonder why I am mentioning this, I recommend that you take a break and go read my article on what happened after the 800 m race was included in the 1928 Olympics and the abusive, scurrilous, vituperative comments of a bunch of misogynists who, supposedly, followed the race).The IOC started to panic. In 1923 they discussed the feminist movement and the “abuses and excesses” to which it gave rise. They realised that it was too late to muzzle the women's claims. So they decided to embrace and stifle. The first step was for the international federations to take control of the women's activities. Concerning athletics this was quite convenient, given that the president of the IAAF was S. Edström, who made sure that women were excluded from the 1924 Games. So Milliat organised the second Women's Olympic Games in 1926 in Göteborg. The use of the term “Olympic” aroused the ire and indignation of the IOC. Negotiations between the IOC and the FSFI ensued and in the end it was agreed that a full programme of women's athletic events would be introduced in the 1928 Olympic Games. In exchange Milliat altered the title of the Women's Olympics to "Women's World Games". Unfortunately the IOC did not respect their side of the bargain. When this proposal came before the IAAF Congress, the reactions were such that finally it was decided that five events would be admitted and, in fact, only as an experiment.
In its annual meeting in 1929 the IOC voted to withdraw the women's program from athletics. The representative of the USA in the IAAF was not A. Brundage (thank God!), but G. Kirby, a person who is considered one of the architects of the modern US Olympic committee. He fielded a motion that the IAAF withdraw all male athletes from the 1932 Olympics unless women were accepted in the Games. So the IOC back-pedalled and in 1931 voted in favour of admitting women. This shows that despite the strong personality of A. Milliat women would not get very far without the support of a part of the male sport establishment. The third Women’s World Games were held in Prague, in 1930. Two hundred athletes from 17 countries participated in this 3-day event. Regardless of the success, the demands of Milliat for a full Olympic program fell once again on deaf ears. The women’s program for the 1932 Olympic Games included two new events but in the same time the 800 m had disappeared.
The FSFI renewed its demand for a full women's athletics program in the 1936 Olympics during the IAAF 1932 meeting. This was not accepted, as expected, and as a result the FSFI presented an "ultimatum": if a full program was not accepted, then the FSFI preferred to have no women events at all. Leigh and Bonin, in their article on A. Milliat, argue that the ultimatum was the beginning of the end for the FSFI. It started with the proposal from Germany that the IAAF take complete governance of women’s athletics. The IAAF argued that the dualistic control, IAAF and FSFI, was expensive and troublesome, and that women would be best represented in the IOC by the IAAF. What was really happening was that the IAAF, witnessing the success and world-wide influence of the FSFI, decide to suck the lifeblood out it.
The 1934 Women's World Games were held in London with 19 countries from 4 continents participating. In the FSFI 1934 meeting it was decided that the FSFI would discontinue the Women's World Games series in exchange for a full program for women in the Olympics and a direct women's representative in the IOC. (Women had to wait for decades for both). Following the IOC reluctance, Milliat asked that all participation by women in the Olympics be terminated then and there, so that women could organise their own games. The demand was simply ignored. And to add insult to injury, the IOC rejected the IAAF proposal to augment the women's athletics program for the 1936 Olympics.
The final episode of A. Milliat's campaign took place during the 1936 IAAF Congress. It was decided that the IAAF would recognise the records, curated up to that point by the FSFI. In the same time the Women's World Games programmed for 1938 were to be transformed into European Championships under the full control of the IAAF. However the IAAF did not promise any substantial enlargement of the women’s Olympic program: a program of 9 events was proposed, and in fact the 1938 Europeans took place with this 9-event program (with the longest race being the 200 m!).
Leigh and Bonin, observed epigrammatically "(at that point) all FSFI cards had been played". So in 1938 the FSFI closed down. Alice Milliat’s career as an international sports leader was over. Thanks to her character, charisma and actions, she remained a key figure of the women’s sports movement of the early 20th century. She also remained a visionary of the realities of sport:
"Unfortunately we do not have leaders; the men who take an interest in sport do not realise that they could profit by granting some interest in women's sports; they confine themselves to the eternal male egoism".
It would take more than half a century for things to start changing.
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